The headquarters of the Ministry of Finance in Moscow, Russia. War, sanctions, perplexing government decrees and disrupted payment chains are leaving investors in Russian bonds scratching their heads. Payments to foreigners were halted under a set of Russian capital controls designed to insulate the economy from sanctions triggered by the invasion of Ukraine. Then a decree suggested the majority of foreign investors would be paid, not in the currency the bonds were issued, but in Russian rubles, which have lost more than a quarter of their value in the last two weeks. Is that a default? The question has bondholders digging into the fine print. 1. What do the Russian rules say? Creditors from “countries that engage in hostile activities” can only be paid interest and principal payments in rubles, rather than the currency of the bond, according a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin March 5. With the […]