Buenos Aires., A New York court condemned Argentina for the expropriation of the oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) in 2012 and ordered compensation to the injured shareholders of the Burford Capital and Eton Park funds.
A decade ago, the government of then-president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) expropriated 51 percent of the shares of YPF, then controlled by the Spanish company Repsol, through a law of Congress. The remaining percentage was distributed among oil provinces.
The expropriation law approved by the Argentine Congress declared the self-sufficiency of hydrocarbons, as well as the exploration, exploitation, industrialization, transport and commercialization of hydrocarbons, to be of national public interest and as a priority objective.
Repsol, which had acquired YPF in 1993, was compensated with 5 billion dollars in 2014.
The ruling favors the Burford Capital and Eton Park funds, which claimed that, at the time of YPF’s nationalization, Argentina should have made a takeover offer for the entire company and not just a part.
Minority shareholders Petersen Energía Inversora and Eton Park sued Argentina and the oil company in a New York court between 2015 and 2016, alleging breach of contract. Then the English fund Burford Capital acquired Petersen’s claim and continued the litigation.
“The court finds that the claimants were prejudiced by Argentina, because they were entitled to receive a takeover bid that would have provided them with a compensated exit, but did not do so,” Judge Loretta Presk of the District of New York concluded in a ruling. released this Friday.
In a split ruling, Judge Presk condemned the Argentine State, but exempted the YPF oil company on the grounds that it “was not a guarantor of the republic’s obligations”; She acknowledged that she cannot immediately quantify the compensation, because she cannot specify the date on which Argentina activated its takeover bid obligation. Therefore, “the court reserves judgment about the precise rate it will use,” she noted.