By Andrea Shalal and Jorgelina do Rosario
WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) – U.S.-based investment firm BlackRock said on Friday it would join a new sovereign debt roundtable set up to accelerate progress on stalled relief efforts for distressed countries with Britain’s Standard Chartered also joining according to sources.
The Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, chaired by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and India – this year’s leader of the Group of 20 major economies – will hold its first virtual meeting on Friday, a gathering aimed at setting the agenda for an in-person meeting on Feb. 25 on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting in Bengaluru, India.
“We welcome the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable and look forward to engaging constructively in the dialogue alongside other key stakeholders,” a spokesperson for BlackRock told Reuters.
Three people with knowledge of the matter said Standard Chartered would also join. A spokesperson for Standard Chartered did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Unlike the Common Framework platform for bilateral debt restructuring, the roundtable talks include public and private creditors as well as borrowing countries, a move aimed at finding common ground on standards, principles and definitions for how to restructure debts of distressed countries, officials have said.
Participants include officials from creditor countries China, India, Saudi Arabia, the United States and other wealthy Group of Seven democracies, as well as six borrowing countries – Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Suriname and Ecuador.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington and Jorgelina do Rosario in London, editing by Karin Strohecker and Tomasz Janowski)
