No signs of Russia payment; confusion starts countdown to bond deadline

Russia says it has fulfilled order to pay $117 million in Eurobond interest, but bondholders in Europe say they have received no sign of the funds

Russia’s Finance Ministry said that it has paid the interest on its dollar bonds to its correspondent bank, giving incremental details on a payment that has come to exemplify how the nation plans to handle its future relations with creditors. 

In an emailed statement on Thursday, the finance ministry said it had sent the order for a $117 million coupon payment on March 14 to a correspondent bank that it didn’t identify, adding that it would issue a separate comment if the paying agent, Citibank’s London branch, has received the payment. The bank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

So far, bondholders in Europe have received no sign of the funds. Bonds with coupons due Wednesday rose.

What happens next is unclear, but if Russia’s creditors don’t get the cash in dollars within the 30-day grace period that starts on Thursday, it would be the first time the nation defaulted on foreign-currency bonds since the Bolsheviks repudiated the czar’s debts in 1918.

SNAPSHOT

• Russia was due to pay $117 mn by Wednesday deadline
• Moscow has 30-days grace before any default declared
• Creditors see this week's deadline as test for Moscow
• Russia says it has cash, any default ‘artificial’

Any such outcome could reinforce Russia’s exclusion from global capital markets and raise its borrowing costs. The government and firms including Gazprom and Lukoil have about $150 billion of foreign-currency debt. Such amounts and the broader financial squeeze may not be enough to threaten a global financial crisis. But the strains are rippling through emerging markets and could deal shocks to a world economy undergoing a seismic transformation in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

“The Russian debt deterioration was very sudden and in a country where the fundamentals were strong, so it will definitely be more significant than, say, Argentina’s default,” Anthony Kettle, a senior portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management Plc, said. “It may lead to some further diversification of international reserves, with possibly more of a role for CNY, as the U.S. has used sanctions and the dollar reserve asset status so effectively in this case.”

As for Russia’s impact, while its economy has been devastated by measures such as freezing much of the central bank’s $640 billion in reserves, the country’s large current account surplus means it doesn’t necessarily need bond market access.

 President Vladimir Putin set out new rules for debt settlements and divided foreign creditors into two categories: those from “countries that engage in hostile activities” can only be paid interest and principal payments in rubles.

The new procedure involves opening so-called Type C accounts, which can be done automatically without the consent or involvement of a foreign creditor, Morgan Lewis partner Grigory Marinichev said. 

For investors based in unfriendly nations, receiving transfers into Type Cs is “equivalent to paying into a blocked account,” Marinichev said. “You can’t repatriate those rubles.” 

Any such payment would likely kick off a bout of legal wrangling between Russia and its bondholders over what constitutes a legitimate settlement of the debt. That matters not just for bondholders but for the investors holding $40 billion worth of credit default swaps linked to Russian debt.