Griffon,M.and P.Hugon (1996). Meso economic analysis filière and competitiveness in Africa , in M. Benoit Cattin, M. Griffon, P. Guillaumont (1996).

Death generates death as the vulture breeds the vulture.

and the pelican, and the vulture, and the cormorant,

and the pelican, and the vulture, and the cormorant,

And the vulture, and the kite after his kind

And the vulture, and the kite after his kind

Kid, we'd like to make you an honouray vulture.

'These you shall detest among the birds they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination the eagle, and the vulture, and the black vulture,

'These you shall detest among the birds they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination the eagle, and the vulture, and the black vulture,

And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,

And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,

He's like a vulture, ready to prey on... a factory in bankruptcy or upon a lone woman.

But these are they of which you shall not eat the eagle, and the vulture, and the osprey,

But these are they of which you shall not eat the eagle, and the vulture, and the osprey,

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to these problems. Investors could agree to insert language into bond contracts that leaves no room for vulture funds.

Shave your heads, and cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture for they have gone into captivity from you!

Shave your heads, and cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture for they have gone into captivity from you!

The most famous case was that of Elliot Associates, a vulture fund, against Peru in 1995, ending up with full payment to Elliot by the Government of Peru.

Americans have seen how financial firms put their own interests ahead of those of the country and the world. The vulture funds have raised greed to a new level.

The risk of litigation has also increased, especially because of a lack of collective representation mechanisms, the presence of vulture investors or the legal implications of bilateral investment treaties.

This next is the Sudanese girl, a few moments from death, a vulture hovering in the background, a picture that went round the world and shocked people into action on poverty.

26 The risk of litigation has increased with the emergence of vulture funds that would buy distressed sovereign debt on the secondary markets and then sue for full repayment once restructuring negotiations commenced.

Some might counter that the holdout hedge funds that sued Argentina deserve no sympathy, either. Many are called vulture funds because they bought the debt at a steep discount from the original creditors, hoping to profit subsequently through court decisions.

The fact that the International Monetary Fund, the US Department of Justice, and anti poverty NGOs all joined in opposing the vulture funds is revealing. But so, too, is the court s decision, which evidently assigned little weight to their arguments.

This quixotic strategy met with unexpected success when Federal Judge Thomas Griesa ruled in the holdouts favor. Griesa idiosyncratically reinterpreted the pari passu, or equal treatment, clause in the debt contracts to mean that vulture funds refusing to participate in the earlier debt exchange should receive not 30 but 100 cents on the dollar.

Such contracts should also include collective action clauses, which make it impossible for vulture funds to hold up debt restructuring. When a sufficient proportion of creditors agree to a restructuring plan (in the case of Argentina, the holders of more than 90 of the country s debt did), the others can be forced to go along.

Kicillof has gained international recognition as the public face of Argentina s fight against the so called vulture funds that want to extort full payment on Argentine bonds that they purchased for a few pennies on the dollar. But, before joining President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner s cabinet, Kicillof was known in Argentine intellectual circles as the author of the book Volver a Keynes (Return to Keynes).

But a few vulture funds most notoriously the hedge fund Elliott Management, headed by the billionaire Paul E. Singer saw Argentina s travails as an opportunity to make huge profits at the expense of the Argentine people. They bought the old bonds at a fraction of their face value, and then used litigation to try to force Argentina to pay 100 cents on the dollar.

To make matters worse, when a compromise is reached, the burden falls disproportionately on the debtor, in the form of enforced austerity and structural reforms that make the residual debt even less sustainable. Furthermore, the recent strengthening of creditor rights and the growth of bond financing has made sovereign debt restructuring enormously complex and open to abuse by highly speculative holdout investors, including so called vulture funds.

But a few vulture funds most notoriously the hedge fund Elliott Management, headed by the billionaire Paul E. Singer saw Argentina s travails as an opportunity to make huge profits at the expense of the Argentine people. They bought the old bonds at a fraction of their face value, and then used litigation to try to force Argentina to pay 100 cents on the dollar.