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FinObservatory

Sovereign haircuts / EGY

Egypt

3 concluded restructurings, between 1876 and 1880. The earliest default they settle began in 1876. The worst cost creditors 34.1% of the present value of their claim, in 1877. The longest gap between a default and its settlement was 4 years.

3
Restructurings
17.0%
Median present-value haircut
34.1%
Worst present-value haircut
3 of 3
Cut face value by zero
$16.35B
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.

020406080100187618771880Year the restructuring concluded
Present-value haircutFace-value reduction
DefaultSettledYears to settlePresent-value haircutFace-value reductionDebt treated (2020 $)Source
18761876014.7%0.0%$6.09BMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
18771877034.1%0.0%$690MMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
18761880417.0%0.0%$9.57BMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)

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

Bond prices

3 of 3 Egypt restructuring episodes have Waterloo prices during the restructuring interval

The haircut file dates episodes by year. Waterloo matches them by country code and plots a padded window from one year before default through one year after settlement.
The public Waterloo bond panel in this repo runs from Jan 1, 1822 to Dec 1, 1980. This selector uses price only, never pbid or pask, and shows one line per bond from one year before default to one year after settlement. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD”; it does not document normalization to face value. Across all 329 haircut episodes, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after Dec 1, 1980. Those two counts overlap.
Selected episode: default 1876, settled 1880, case 128, spell EGY_1876-1880. Window: Jan 1, 1875 to Dec 31, 1881.
GBP bond prices
Independent GBP y-axis; values are not scaled against another currency.
05010015018751876187718781879188018817% Bonds of 1864, due 1879 (GBP): 70 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to Oct 1, 18809% Bonds of 1867, due 1881 (GBP): 70 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to Oct 1, 18803.5% (5) preferred Bonds of 1877,1880, due 1943 (GBP): 60 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1877 to Dec 1, 18814% (7) Unified Bonds of 1877,1880 (dated 1876), due 1941 (GBP): 60 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1877 to Dec 1, 18817% Bonds of 1868, due 1898 (GBP): 31 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to Jul 1, 18777% Bonds of 1873, due 1903 (GBP): 31 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to Jul 1, 18777% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (1st issue) (GBP): 29 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to May 1, 18777% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (2nd issue) (GBP): 29 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1875 to May 1, 1877Observation monthBond price (GBP)
Bond legend (GBP)
7% Bonds of 1864, due 1879 (GBP)
9% Bonds of 1867, due 1881 (GBP)
3.5% (5) preferred Bonds of 1877,1880, due 1943 (GBP)
4% (7) Unified Bonds of 1877,1880 (dated 1876), due 1941 (GBP)
7% Bonds of 1868, due 1898 (GBP)
7% Bonds of 1873, due 1903 (GBP)
7% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (1st issue) (GBP)
7% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (2nd issue) (GBP)
380 monthly observations across 8 bonds. 284 of those observations fall inside the shaded restructuring interval. Earliest point in this window: Jan 1, 1875. Latest: Dec 1, 1881. One line equals one bond; no cross-bond average is computed.
BondCurrencyISINObs.FirstLast
7% Bonds of 1864, due 1879GBPnot recorded70Jan 1, 1875Oct 1, 1880
9% Bonds of 1867, due 1881GBPnot recorded70Jan 1, 1875Oct 1, 1880
3.5% (5) preferred Bonds of 1877,1880, due 1943GBPnot recorded60Jan 1, 1877Dec 1, 1881
4% (7) Unified Bonds of 1877,1880 (dated 1876), due 1941GBPnot recorded60Jan 1, 1877Dec 1, 1881
7% Bonds of 1868, due 1898GBPnot recorded31Jan 1, 1875Jul 1, 1877
7% Bonds of 1873, due 1903GBPnot recorded31Jan 1, 1875Jul 1, 1877
7% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (1st issue)GBPnot recorded29Jan 1, 1875May 1, 1877
7% Bonds of 1862, due 1892 (2nd issue)GBPnot recorded29Jan 1, 1875May 1, 1877
Each option includes its case id and default-spell id. The chart includes every priced bond for that country in the window, so it does not identify bonds belonging to the selected restructuring. The one-year padding is a display window, one year either side; an editorial choice rather than a source-defined threshold. It uses waterloo_bonds.price only; pbid and pask are not averaged into it. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD” and does not document face-value normalization. GBP and USD observations use separate labelled panels and y-axes. Of the 329 episodes in the haircut file, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after 1980-12-01; these counts overlap. Later episodes show an absence message rather than an implied zero.

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo (bond-price panel) | Harvard Dataverse, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo Methodology

Default spells

SpellFromToYearsRestructurings
EGY_1876-18801876188053

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

Debt still in default

The Bank of Canada-Bank of England default database records no debt in default for Egypt in its latest year.

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