Limits RegistryPUBLIC RECORD
Limits RegistryArgentina defaulted on approximately $100 billion of sovereign debt in December 2001, the largest sovereign debt default in history at the time it occurred, triggering years of litigation with holdout creditors that continued for more than a decade afterward. Later restructurings elsewhere (such as Greece in 2012) have since been described by some analysts as larger by certain measures, so this record is best understood as the largest sovereign default of its era.
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Argentina defaulted on approximately $100 billion of sovereign debt in December 2001, the largest sovereign debt default in history at the time it occurred, triggering years of litigation with holdout creditors that continued for more than a decade afterward. Later restructurings elsewhere (such as Greece in 2012) have since been described by some analysts as larger by certain measures, so this record is best understood as the largest sovereign default of its era.
The greatest total face value of sovereign bonds defaulted on by a single national government in one default event, as of the time it occurred.
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Limits Registry. LR-LARGEST-SOVEREIGN-DEBT-DEFAULT-2001. Largest sovereign debt default in history (Argentina, 2001). 2026.