FinObservatory

Sovereign haircuts / DMA

Dominica

One concluded restructuring, settled in 2004. It cost creditors 54.0% of the present value of their claim, 1 year after the default that began in 2003.

1
Restructurings
54.0%
Median present-value haircut
54.0%
Worst present-value haircut
0 of 1
Cut face value by zero
$192M
Debt treated (2020 $)

Every restructuring

Two measures of the same deals, never combined. The present-value haircut discounts what creditors got against what they were owed; the face-value reduction counts only principal written off.

0204060801002004Year the restructuring concluded
Present-value haircutFace-value reduction
DefaultSettledYears to settlePresent-value haircutFace-value reductionDebt treated (2020 $)Source
20032004154.0%15.0%$192MCruces and Trebesch (2013)

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Debt treated is the amount restructured, deflated to constant 2020 US dollars in the source file. A negative haircut means the new instruments were worth more than the old claim. Methodology

Default spells

SpellFromToYearsRestructurings
DMA_2003-20042003200421

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Duration counts both endpoints. The spells table also carries a cumulative-haircut column; it is not published here because it does not reconcile with the per-episode haircuts, see the methodology. Methodology

The Cruces-Trebesch record: a third measure and the discount rate

The Cruces-Trebesch file carries 1 restructuring here, and adds the market haircut (the new instruments against the face value of the old claim, undiscounted) and the exit yield used to do the discounting. The deal label is the file’s own and is finer than the country: it names the instrument class the deal covered. The two files were assembled separately, so a deal here need not line up one-to-one with a row above.

DealDatePresent valueMarketFace valueExit yieldStructureData quality
Dominica2004-09-0154.0%54.0%15.0%9.2%bond exchange4 / 5

Source: Cruces & Trebesch, haircut dataset (2014 update) Data quality is the file's own 1-to-5 index of how well the deal terms are documented. Methodology

Debt still in default

$12.9M across 2 creditor classes in 2024. A haircut can only be measured once a restructuring concludes, so any of this that is still being negotiated is by construction absent from the tables above.

Creditor classIn default, 2024
Other private creditors$7.9M
Domestic (fiscal) arrears$5.0M

Source: Bank of Canada-Bank of England Sovereign Default Database (CRAG) Bank of Canada terms (attribution). Includes domestic arrears, so it is not comparable with the debt-treated column above. Methodology

Methodology, the measures, and what this data cannot tell you