A U.S. court-appointed mediator said that Argentina's new government and holdout bondholders are to meet in the second week of January to start "substantive" talks toward settling a more than decade-old sovereign debt dispute, Reuters reported yesterday. The talks would mark a major breakthrough in the dispute, which has caused Argentina to be shut out of the international capital markets and encouraged the prior governments of both Cristina Fernandez and Nestor Kirchner to adopt unorthodox economic policies. Mauricio Macri, the first non-Peronist president in more than a decade, was sworn into office on Dec. 10. He has moved to start reversing some of the populist policies of the prior governments and said it was a priority to settle the debt issue. Daniel Pollack, a New York lawyer who is the mediator, said that he met for about one hour on Monday in his office with Argentina's newly installed finance secretary, Luis Caputo, and the vice chief of the cabinet, Mario Quintana. "The meeting was constructive, covering a range of issues, and it was agreed that they will return to New York City in the second week of January to commence substantive negotiations with the bondholders," Pollack said in a statement released through his law firm, McCarter & English.
