Investors Supported Consent Solicitation Transactions Initiated by Ukraine

Today, August 10, 2022 Ukraine announces the completion its liability management transaction launched on July 20, 2022.

The 3-week negotiations with bondholders and GDP warrants holders resulted in the successful amendment of all of Ukraine’s sovereign international eurobonds and GDP warrants, as well as state-guaranteed eurobonds. Holders of around 75% of the aggregate principal amount of Ukraine’s 13 eurobond series outstanding voted in favor of amending the conditions of the eurobonds (with at least 2/3rds of the aggregate principal amount of eurobonds  outstanding being required for successful amendment). Furthermore, each series of sovereign eurobonds received more than 50% of votes in favor of amending the conditions, in line with the applicable consent requirements. 

Holders of approximately 93% of the notional amount of GDP warrants outstanding have participated in the consent solicitation, out of which 91% voted in favor of the proposed amendments. The successful consent is a testament to investors’ willingness to support Ukraine and mitigate a potential high burden of the instrument for Ukraine’s economy during the post-war growth period.

Investors have also supported proposals from Ukrenergo and Ukravtodor on amendments to the conditions of their respective state-guaranteed eurobonds. 

This transaction follows on the initiative announced on July 20 2022 by international partners of Ukraine within the G7 and the Paris Club (excluding Russia) to suspend debt service payment for Ukraine till the end of 2023 with the possibility to extend the suspension by one more year.

“We are grateful to investors for accepting our proposal. Thanks to the solidarity with Ukraine shown by the private investor community along with the official public sector, we will be able to meet the needs of the state budget of the country in war and to keep our public finances sustainable.” - said Sergii Marchenko, Minister of Finance of Ukraine.

“We are very proud of the high-quality investor fund base we have built up during the last years. I'd like to emphasize that the support we've received during this transaction is hard to underestimate. Our core investor base was always real money investors and by supporting us in this deal they clearly showed that this market is now much more about values than it used to be. All the feedback was very constructive and I'm not aware of any holdouts from our key institutional investor. This allowed us to comfortably pass both the needed thresholds on bonds and warrants

We were also happy to hear that majority of our investors expressed willingness to participate in the post-war reconstruction efforts of Ukraine. Hopefully, sooner rather than later we will recover from the economic shock caused by war started by russia and we’ll come back to the market as always as a responsible and reliable issuer.”, - said Yuriy Butsa, Government Commissioner for Public Debt Management.