Nearly three-quarters of eligible Argentine creditors signed up for the government's historic $102.6 billion debt swap offer in the first three weeks, the head of the local debt exchange intermediary told Reuters on Saturday. Luis Corsiglia, president of Argentina's Caja de Valores, said 73.8 percent of local holders of defaulted debt had exchanged their bonds as of Friday.
Based on the local participation, Corsiglia estimated that world-wide, over 31 percent of eligible debt has been swapped in the first half of the six-week offer.
A week earlier, that figure was 26.7 percent.
"The accumulated figure up to the end of the week was $19.929 billion at the local level ... which represents about 24.3 percent of the total debt and so that means a global acceptance rate of over 31 percent," Corsiglia told Reuters.
As its economy recovers from a crippling crisis, the South American nation needs high participation rates in the debt swap to regain credibility in international credit markets and resume loan negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.
Argentina has angered many private creditors with its offer of up to $41.8 billion in three types of bonds in exchange for $81.8 billion of debt on which it defaulted in 2002, or $102.6 billion when past due interest is added.
The government is expected to provide the updated official acceptance rate to Italian regulators on Monday.
Most analysts expect Argentina to get approval by 60 percent to 70 percent of creditors but there is no clear benchmark for the swap to be considered successful.
Corsiglia was upbeat on investor response to the offer.
"It was a very active week ... I know that yesterday (Friday) there was a lot of offer (to swap bonds) on foreign markets and offers are beginning to come in from Japan," he said.
Friday was the final day for small retail investors to sign up on a preferential basis for the par bonds - which have the same face value as the original bonds - but Corsiglia said demand was higher for the discount bond which has a higher interest rate and should do well on markets later.