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Ruling for the expropriation of YPF
- 10/09/2023 » 10:45 by cronywell
Ruling for the expropriation of YPF: Argentina must pay US$16 billion.
When calculating compensation, the New York judge opted for the value closest to what the plaintiff fund was requesting. It was a measure by Cristina Kirchner's government.
As a result of an adverse ruling issued by the United States Justice Department, Argentina must pay $16 billion for the expropriation of YPF shares, carried out improperly.
The catastrophic sentence of the judge of the Southern District of New York, Loretta Preska, was known this Friday and she opted for the most unfavorable scenario for the country. For Argentina, the trial was already lost and it intended to pay no more than 5,000 million dollars.
The difference between the figure of the sentence and the Argentine claim lay in calculating interest according to the date of the arrival of Argentine officials in YPF and the date on which the expropriation was approved by law of Congress.
Argentina wanted Judge Preska to indicate that the date of expropriation had been May 7, 2012, when the expropriation law was passed. That way, the compensation would be from that day. In addition, she wanted the retroactive annual interest rate that they were going to apply (from 2012, when it was expropriated, to 2023) to be 0%. That would give close to USD 5,000 million.
However, the Burford fund considered that YPF's intervention materialized on April 16, when the Minister of Economy at that time, Axel Kicillof, was appointed auditor of the company and displaced the private shareholders. From that moment until May 7, YPF shares fell 25%.
In that scenario, Burford would have collected around USD 8.3 billion, even with 0% interest, as Argentina wanted. In any case, the litigants aspired to be recognized with a rate of 8% annually, which would bring the check to USD 16,000 million, an amount that the American judge finally decided.
Now, the $16 billion that Argentina will have to pay is more than the value of 100% of YPF today, whether measured by the official dollar or the blue dollar. In the first case, the oil company has a capitalization of USD 12,200 million, while in the second, in free dollars, its value would be USD 5,298 million.
