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Argentina has agreed to pay $4.65 billion to four hedge funds on Monday in a deal that could put an end to more than a decade of mudslinging and legal attacks, the New York Times reported today. The hedge funds, which include the billionaire Paul E. Singer’s NML Capital, are the last among of group of investors that declared legal war on Argentina in the United States 12 years ago. These holdouts, so named for their refusal to partake in Argentina’s two restructurings after it defaulted on $100 billion of debt in 2001, sought billions in bond repayments and eventually succeeded in preventing Argentina from paying any of its creditors. The four hedge funds, including Aurelius, a hedge fund run by Mark Brodsky, a former trader at Singer’s Elliott Management; Davidson Kempner, and Bracebridge Capital, have agreed not to try to prevent Argentina from raising new money. The deal will also depend on whether Argentina’s legislature will repeal domestic laws that prevents the government from paying holdouts.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is struggling to sell $2 billion in bonds backing the buyout of software firm Solera Holdings Inc., another sign of cracks in the market for the low-rated debt that has been a key driver of the takeover boom, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Solera’s sale to Vista Equity Partners was one of the biggest leveraged buyouts of last year, at $6.5 billion including debt, and has been widely viewed as a test of the credit market. The bond sale comes at a time when U.S. junk-bond issuance has dropped more than 70 percent from a year ago and borrowing costs have increased, as risk-averse investors back away from riskier securities or demand sweeter terms. Solera’s bonds carry a Caa1 rating from Moody’s Investors Service, which is where some of the worst market carnage has taken place in recent months as investors dial back their risk taking. U.S. junk bonds last year posted their first annual decline since 2008, reflecting a broad retrenchment in the lowest reaches of the market.

A U.S. federal judge said that he is prepared to lift an injunction that has prevented Argentina from returning to the international capital markets, paving the way for a potential settlement with bondholders who have battled Argentina for years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The decision is welcome news for Argentina and President Mauricio Macri, who has made resolving the long-running dispute a priority. A group of U.S. bondholders, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp., have been wrangling with Argentina over payment on its defaulted government debt. Argentina has been effectively barred from raising money in the international bond markets since its default in 2001 on more than $80 billion in government bonds, the largest sovereign default at the time. The new administration views a global bond offering as crucial for raising capital to stimulate an economy mired in recession. “The injunctions, once appropriate to address the Republic’s recalcitrance, can no longer be justified,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa wrote Friday in his ruling.

A top U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official said that regulators remain worried about hard-to-sell assets held by high-yield bond funds as they probe whether the failure of the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund could be repeated, Bloomberg News reported today. The SEC plans to release findings from a sweep of high-yield credit funds that followed the collapse of the Third Avenue Capital Management LLC fund, said Marc Wyatt, head of the regulator’s office of compliance inspections and examinations. “There is ongoing concern,” Wyatt said on Saturday. The SEC began reviewing about 70 funds in December after the $788.5 million Third Avenue fund blocked clients from getting their money out, said Jane Jarcho, another top SEC examiner. Losses and withdrawals left Third Avenue unable to meet redemptions without selling assets at fire-sale prices. SEC examiners sent letters to funds that invest in similar securities to the Third Avenue fund, ordering them to explain how their bonds could be sold as quickly as they say.

A group of hedge funds fighting to stop Argentina from paying other debt holders before them isn’t backing down, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The hedge funds yesterday urged a U.S. judge to keep in place injunctions blocking Argentina from paying its restructured debt before the country pays them what they’re owed on defaulted bonds. Dropping the injunctions “would upend the negotiations that only now are just beginning in earnest and would risk new and unwanted litigation," funds led by Paul Singer’s NML Capital argued in a court filing in Manhattan. Argentina told the judge last week that a court-ordered ban is no longer needed after it reached agreements this month to resolve claims on defaulted bonds with billionaire Kenneth Dart’s EM Ltd. and Montreux Partners. The funds say that the injunctions are necessary to keep Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, at the bargaining table. They dispute Argentina’s claim that settlement talks have made substantial progress.

The banking industry is under pressure after lending billions to energy companies that are now grappling with falling oil prices and plummeting profits, according to a Washington Post commentary. It is Wall Street’s biggest challenge in years, according to the commentary, and a potential test of whether the Dodd-Frank Act reforms put in place after the 2008 financial crisis are strong enough to withstand new market pressure. Earlier this week, Neel Kashkari, who managed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program used to rescue banks during the crisis, piled on. “The biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant risk to our economy,” said Kashkari, who is now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said the bank would issue proposals by the end of the year to prevent another financial crisis.

Investment firm EIG Pacific Holdings Ltd. said yesterday that it had extended the deadline and changed some terms for its offer to buy nearly all the debt of Colombia's largest private oil producer, Pacific Exploration & Production Corp., Reuters reported. The deadline for the offer for Pacific's $4.1 billion in debt has been extended until March 24 from Feb. 10. As part of the new offer, EIG, a subsidiary of Harbour Energy Ltd., said that it had reduced the amount it is willing to pay bondholders because oil prices have continued to drop and Pacific E&P's financial condition has deteriorated.

Wild swings in the stock market are making shares an unpredictable currency lately, and corporate buyers are leaning on cash to get deals done, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis today. So far this year, the average public-company takeover has been 77 percent cash, the highest quarterly level since early 2013, according to FactSet. Of 21 public-company deals over $1 billion, 13 have been all cash. In just 26 trading sessions this year, the S&P 500 has moved by 1 percent 16 times — nearly twice the rate of such swings last year. Volatility makes it hard for buyers to use their stock as currency, not knowing what shares will be worth in the future.

Two well-known managers of private-equity funds are pushing further into debt investments partly in a bid to take advantage of the opportunities created by recent upheaval in the global capital markets, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Related Fund Management, an arm of Stephen Ross’s Related Cos., will soon start raising a closed-end debt fund that could be as large as $2 billion. New York-based Related started making debt investments focusing on junior debt two years ago mostly in partnership with Highbridge Principal Strategies, a unit of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Meanwhile, Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors, of Boca Raton, Fla., is looking to raise more than $500 million for a new debt fund. Like Related, Kayne Anderson has been focusing its debt investments on junior, or so-called mezzanine, debt that is more risky but pays a higher interest rate than senior debt.