Puerto Rico in Distress

ABI Analysis

Puerto Rico yesterday said that it would appeal a U.S. ruling that voided the island's restructuring law, saying that it left the U.S. commonwealth in legal limbo, Reuters reported yesterday. Late on Friday a U.S. federal judge ruled that Puerto Rico's so-called Recovery Act, which made some of its agencies eligible for court-supervised debt restructuring, violated the U.S.

A U.S. federal judge voided a controversial law that allows some of Puerto Rico's public corporations to default on their debt, saying in a ruling late on Friday that the U.S. commonwealth’s “Recovery Act” contravenes federal bankruptcy law, Reuters reported on Friday. The decision in the U.S. District Court has implications for around $20 billion of debt potentially affected under the act.

The federal judge who ruled that Caribbean resort Scrub Island can leave bankruptcy protection also turned down a request from the resort's lender, FirstBank Puerto Rico, that would have shut the 53-room resort down while another judge reviews the case, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today.

Doral Financial, the troubled Puerto Rico bank with offices that were raided by the FBI last month, has run afoul with banking regulators over its plans to restore its depleted capital levels, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. For the second time in a little more than a month, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.