Sovereign haircuts / SYC
Seychelles
One concluded restructuring, settled in 2010. It cost creditors 56.2% of the present value of their claim, 2 years after the default that began in 2008.
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.
| Default | Settled | Years to settle | Present-value haircut | Face-value reduction | Debt treated (2020 $) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 2010 | 2 | 56.2% | 50.0% | $376M | Cruces 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
| Spell | From | To | Years | Restructurings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SYC_2008-2010 | 2008 | 2010 | 3 | 1 |
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.
| Deal | Date | Present value | Market | Face value | Exit yield | Structure | Data quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seychelles | 2010-02-01 | 56.2% | 56.9% | 50.0% | 10.7% | bond exchange | 3 / 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
$11.0M across 1 creditor class 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 class | In default, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Domestic (fiscal) arrears | $11.0M |
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
Restructurings with Chinese creditors
6 restructurings with Chinese creditors are recorded here. No haircut is attached to any of them, so they cannot be placed on the scale above; the file records only whether face value or the interest rate was cut.
| Year | Type | Creditor | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | First rescheduling of the 1997 China Ex-Im Bank RMB 50 mn Government Concessional Loan for the East Coast Housing Project with original loan terms as follows: 4% interest rate, 8-year maturity, and 3-year grace period. In 2000, China Ex-Im Bank granted a 3-year maturity and a 3-year grace period extension. |
| 2001 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Second rescheduling of the 1997 China Ex-Im Bank RMB 50 mn Government Concessional Loan for the East Coast Housing Project with original loan terms as follows: 4% interest rate, 8-year maturity, and 3-year grace period. In 2001, China Ex-Im Bank granted an interest rate reduction of 200 bps. |
| 2003 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Third rescheduling of the 1997 China Ex-Im Bank RMB 50 mn Government Concessional Loan for the East Coast Housing Project with original loan terms as follows: 4% interest rate, 8-year maturity, and 3-year grace period. In 2003, China Ex-Im Bank granted an additional 3-year maturity and 2-year grace period extension. |
| 2004 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | China Ex-Im Bank reschedules the 1998 87.98 mn RMB Government Concessional Loan for the Les Mamelles Housing Project with the following original terms: 4% interest rate, 8-year maturity, and a 4-year grace period. In 2004, China Ex-Im Bank granted a 8-year maturity extension, a 1-year grace period extension and an interest reduction of 200 bps. |
| 2006 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Fourth rescheduling of the 1997 China Ex-Im Bank RMB 50 mn Government Concessional Loan for the East Coast Housing Project with original loan terms as follows: 4% interest rate, 8-year maturity, and 3-year grace period. In 2006, China Ex-Im Bank granted an additional 2-year grace period extension. |
| 2011 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Final rescheduling between China Ex-Im Bank and the Seychelles that covered three different loans: 1) The 1997 Government Concessional Loan that had been restructured in 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2006 2) The 1998 Government Concessional Loan that had been restructured in 2004 3) The 2005 Government Concessional Loan for 8 mn RMB with original terms as follows: 2% interest rate, 10-year maturity, and 4-year grace period The 2011 restructuring increased maturities by roughly 15 years and grace periods by roughtly 10 years. See Garnder et al. (2020) for a hair-cut estimate. |
Source: Horn, Reinhart & Trebesch, China's overseas lending and debt restructurings Methodology