Argentina is settling with the last holders of bonds that the republic defaulted on more than two decades ago as the South American country attempts to burnish its reputation among investors.

Duane Morris has secured a $67 million payout for Bainbridge Capital on a claim worth more than $94 million, while Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has negotiated an undisclosed amount for a settlement in principle on judgments totaling just over $450 million.

The negotiations capped years of litigation that saw creditors attempt to get paid via seizures of an Argentine naval vessel and a mansion in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, Duane Morris secured an order from Judge Loretta Preska in June 2025 instructing Argentina to transfer shares in state oil company YPF to settle the debt; that helped bring the government to the negotiating table.

“We found that the gap between us wasn’t as big as we thought when we started talking,” said Duane Morris litigator Tony Costantini, adding that the administration of Argentine President Javier Milei has been much more accommodating than its predecessors.

“With the prior administrations, you had to extract a tooth to get something out of them.”

Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who has slashed bureaucracy in an effort to get the Argentine economy on a more solid footing, is up for reelection in October 2027.

Falling borrowing costs and faith in Milei’s economic experiment have raised the prospect that Argentina could return to international capital markets to issue sovereign debt after a long hiatus.

Costantini suspects the settlements are part of a government effort to clean house so that Argentina can move forward with additional financing options.

“As long as there are lawsuits out there, it’s a big caution sign,” he said.

To be sure, the Bainbridge claim against Argentina is easier to write off than the gargantuan $16 billion award secured by Petersen Energia in what amounts to the biggest award in the history of the Southern District of New York. A divided U.S. appeals court struck down the judgment favoring Petersen in March, but litigation funder Burford Capital has said it will look for other ways to collect on that claim.

The Petersen claim centers on Argentina’s 2012 seizure of oil company YPF, which triggered breach of contract suits.

Last Tango?

Argentina’s 2001 default on $100 billion in sovereign debt was painful. The majority of the country’s bondholders accepted 30% of the face value of their bonds to walk away, but some held out for more.

Those holdouts included a group of Italian individual investors who hired Duane Morris to recover their investments, as well as several large hedge funds that had purchased already-discounted Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar.

In 2016, Duane Morris secured a settlement requiring Argentina to repay $150 million to the Italian investors. For that win, Italy bestowed a knighthood on Duane Morris of counsel Rudolph J. "Skip" Di Massa.

Then, hedge fund Bainbridge came calling.

Quinn Emanuel partner Dennis Hranitzky declined to comment on his settlement discussions with Argentina on behalf of his hedge fund client, Attestor Master Value.

In a July 15 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Hranitzky wrote, “The parties are pleased to report that the settlement process is expected to be completed in the coming days.”

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