Dr. Sebastian Grund

Welcome to my web page!

I am a Legal Counsel at the International Monetary Fund, focusing onIMF lending and surveillance, as well as sovereign debt crises and restructurings. My research and policy work has been cited by the European Court of Justice and covered in The Economist, the Financial Times, Reuters, and other media outlets.

I worked as a Legal Counsel and Economist at the European Central Bank (2015-2019) and also gained professional experience in the private sector. I hold a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. I am admitted as an attorney to the New York Bar.

For more information please check out my CV and Research and Policy Work. Please contact me here.

All views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

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NEW BOOK PUBLICATION

Sovereign Debt Restructuring and the Law: The Holdout Creditor Problem in Argentina and GreeceThe book sheds light on the perhaps most important legal conundrum in the context of sovereign debt restructuring: the holdout creditor problem. Absent an international bankruptcy regime for sovereigns, holdout creditors may delay or even thwart the efficient resolution of sovereign debt crises by leveraging contractual provisions and, in an increasing number of cases, by seeking to enforce a debt claim against the sovereign in courts or international tribunals. Following an introduction to sove

RECOMMENDATIONS

No issue in sovereign finance has preoccupied the attention of scholars, politicians and lawyers in this century more than the problem of holdout creditors in sovereign debt workouts. Sebastian Grund has given us a magisterial survey of how courts and arbitrators have dealt with the claims of holdout creditors in two of the largest sovereign debt restructurings in history — Argentina and Greece.

Lee Buchheit, Honorary Professor, University of Edinburgh School of Law and former Senior Partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

This book is a delightful treatment of two of the most important restructurings in the modern history of sovereign debt, Argentina and Greece. While the restructurings and the central problem of holdout creditors manifested themselves in very different ways in the different cases, Grund shows us the lessons we can learn from the commonalities. The treatment of what happened in the particular cases (and there were many) is sure to be invaluable to both scholars and practitioners.

Mitu Gulati, Perre Bowen Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

Holdout creditors are a massive impediment to the orderly restructuring of sovereign debt. They are typically investors who’ve bought the debt to profit from the sovereign debtor, not the original lenders to it. This book explores the approaches of an unusually wide range of national courts to this problem, and distils the lessons from the Argentine and Greek restructurings. It sheds light on issues that need it – as those who ultimately pay the price today of these cynical investments are the poorer citizens of poor nations.

Ross P Buckley, Scientia Professor & ARC Laureate Fellow, University of New South Wales Sydney

ACADEMIC REVIEWS

Lee Buchheit, "The dilemma of sovereign debt enforcement Sovereign Debt Restructuring and the Law. By SEBASTIAN GRUND, UK: Routledge, 2022. 240pp. ISBN. 978-0-367-77460-8", Journal of International Economic Law, Volume 26, Issue 4, December 2023, Pages 843–846, https://doi.org/10.1093/jiel/jgad034

Astrid Iversen, "Sovereign Debt Restructuring and the Law: The Holdout Creditor Problem in Argentina and Greece. By Sebastian Grund. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xvi, 182." American Journal of International Law. 2024;118(2):401-409., https://doi.org/10.1017/ajil.2024.5

Charles Ho Wang Mak, "Sovereign Debt Restructuring and the Law: The Holdout Creditor Problem in Argentina and Greece, New York: Routledge, 2022", INSOL World Q4 2023, https://publications.insol.org/view/859297695/46/