Financial Times

January 29, 2013
By Jude Webber

Eva Geller’ parents, Holocaust survivors from Germany and Austria, always taught her that two things were important in life: education and savings.

“Every penny I got from my grandparents, I put in my piggy bank. I saved all my life,” said Geller, who was born in Uruguay where her parents moved after the war. Having been advised that Argentina was a “very strong government with a very firm government” Geller not only poured her life savings into Argentine bonds, but also advised her Austrian mother, now 90, to buy them too. The rest is history.

Argentina defaulted in 2001. Geller rejected restructuring offers in 2005 and 2010 because she and her mother would probably both be dead by the time the bonds paid out, and “we never got a single cent back”.