Carlos Abadi has played an active role in the emerging markets debt trading arena since the first Mexican syndicated loans started to change hands in the wake of Mexico’s 1982 default. Since then, he has specialized every major restructured sovereign debt instruments issued since 1985.
“A troubled Latin America affects both the security and the economic welfare of the United States, trade is the tool to re-engage Latin America,” asserted Carlos Abadi.
In 2000, through his involvement in public affairs and at the request of United States Senate staff, Carlos Abadi prepared a white paper on international trade, highlighting Latin America’s economic potential and expanding upon the following main points:
• A Regional Trade Agreement between the United States and Latin America will increase welfare throughout the Western Hemisphere.
• Negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) are behind schedule, principally as a consequence of the United States’ refusal to negotiate its agricultural subsidies at the regional level.
• Failure to re-engage Latin America through trade risks deteriorating democratic institutions and reduce cooperation in important areas, such as the war on drugs and the war on terror.
• Success of FTAA would create reliable allies and increase business opportunities for American companies.
• By unilaterally reforming agricultural protectionism, US consumers and taxpayers will benefit and the logjam in FTAA negotiations will be broken.
• From the US standpoint, the biggest obstacle to free trade with Latin America is farm protectionism.
• From the Latin American standpoint the main obstacles are the protection of intellectual property rights and the freeing of the trade in services and government procurement.
• The main obstacles to the removal of protectionist policies are special interests both in the US and in Latin America.
• Following the blueprint of the EU the current trade-based approach to engagement could be leapfrogged in favor of a much more ambitious scheme premised on institutional convergence.
Carlos Abadi dedicated his 20 year career to creating financial solutions and offering expert advice to emerging markets, governments, banks and private sector companies operating in volatile, and sometimes chaotic, financial environments. As a result of Carlos Abadi’s extensive mathematical training, his approach is always based on a solid analytical debt valuation methodology and risk and reward evaluations.
Carlos Abadi earned a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1983. He also earned a Masters of Business Administration and Finance from Cornell University in 1985.
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