Puerto Rico is expected to go through a court-supervised debt restructuring soon, and any request for a tax refund from Walmart would almost certainly get lost in the crowd of bondholders, labor unions, lawyers and others jockeying to recover their money.
In a 5-2 ruling, the court struck down a 2014 Puerto Rico law that would have allowed the island's public entities -- including utility companies -- to declare bankruptcy and seek court-supervised debt restructuring from their creditors.
Roberto Pagan, president of SEIU's 29,000-worker-strong Puerto Rico chapter, said he was concerned that five out of seven board members must vote to approve a court-supervised debt restructuring process in which a federal judge could force write-downs on creditors.
After months of dithering as the crisis escalated, the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico unveiled a draft bill at the end of March that would give the island some very limited access to court-supervised debt restructuring in exchange for a Washington-based fiscal oversight board.
Under Canadian law, holders of the notes will vote on the restructuring plan, which would convert the notes into longer-term debt, through a court-supervised process.
By June 1, GM will either have reached a deal with bondholders to restructure its debt under a government-supervised restructuring, or it will be in bankruptcy.
Puerto Rico's government says that without the ability to restructure its debts in a judicially supervised process, it will never be able to recover economically.
"A failure to approve the support program would result in a multi-notch downgrade to reflect likely default through some form of debt restructuring, or court-supervised bankruptcy proceeding," Moody's said.
But even in the robust German market there are signs that the bust is not over.Creditors of IVG, once Germany's largest property company, voted on March 20th to take over the firm in a court-supervised plan to restructure its $3.2 billion of debt.
The real economy is being stifled by debt incurred by poorly regulated and supervised banks and other financial institutions in the pre-2008 age of easy money.
The miner has suffered from falling prices and a number of production problems, and said it would seek a court-supervised restructuring of its debts.
