When the continuing Greek financial crisis threatened to wipe out much of Poštová banka’s half-billion-dollar stake in Greek bonds, the Slovakian bank turned to an international tribunal—and to Debevoise & Plimpton’s David Rivkin—to keep its investment whole. But Greece’s lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton beat back the challenge, winning a ruling that could have implications for other international bondholder disputes.
Invoking a bilateral investment treaty between Greece and the Slovak Republic, Poštová had challenged a substantial “haircut” that Poštová and other holders of Greek government bonds had to accept as part of a restructuring of the country’s debt. In a decision dated April 9, a tribunal of the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes held that Poštová’s bond holdings aren’t protected investments under the treaty, and therefore the tribunal doesn’t have jurisdiction over the dispute.
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