A US district judge has ordered Argentina to transfer its controlling stake in state-run energy company YPF to former shareholders, escalating pressure on the country to pay a $16bn judgment stemming from its 2012 nationalisation of the group. Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York on Monday gave Argentina 14 days to transfer its shares to a global custody account at BNY as partial payment for the judgment, which was a record sum for the court at the time of Preska’s original 2023 ruling. The plaintiffs are largely financed by litigation funder Burford Capital, whose New York-listed shares rose more than 20 per cent after Monday’s decision.

Argentina’s lawyers had argued that the principle of international comity — the respect one country gives to another’s legal and government decisions — required Preska to reject the plaintiffs’ request. Rejecting that argument, Preska wrote: “While the Republic demands that this court extend comity, it simultaneously refuses to make any effort to honour the court’s unstayed judgment... Comity is not a one-way street.” Sebastian Soler, a former assistant attorney-general in the previous left-leaning Peronist government, called Preska’s decision “unprecedented” and pointed out that Argentine law “bans the government from transferring the expropriated shares without previous approval from congress.”
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