These Were The Largest Sovereign Debt Defaults In Modern History

In July, Ukraine avoided defaulting on $20 billion in loans by reaching a preliminary agreement with private creditors.

Given the financial burden of war, the country suspended interest payments on international debt over the last two years, which was set to expire on August 1, 2024.

Without this new debt restructuring, this default would have ranked among the 10 largest in recent history. The last time Ukraine defaulted on its debt was in 2015, after Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the largest sovereign debt defaults since 1983, based on data from Moody’s via Aswath Damodaran.

The Top 10 Sovereign Debt Defaults

Below, we show the biggest sovereign debt defaults between 1983 and 2022:

Greece’s $264.2 billion default in 2012 stands as the largest overall, unfolding when the country was mired in recession for the fifth consecutive year.

The country defaulted again just nine months later, making it the fourth-largest ever. Leading up to the crash, Greece ran significant deficits despite being one of the fastest-growing countries in Europe. Furthermore, in 2009, the newly elected prime minister revealed that the country was $410 billion in debt—substantially more than previous estimates.

With the second-highest default recorded, Argentina failed to repay interest on $82.3 billion in foreign debt in 2001. Like Greece, it is a repeat offender, defaulting numerous times since independence in 1816. Today, Argentina is the largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund, despite being Latin America’s third-largest economy.

Following next in line is Russia’s 1998 default on $72.7 billion in loans, coinciding with a currency crisis that erased more than two-thirds of the ruble’s value in a matter of weeks. That year, several other countries including Venezuela, Pakistan, and Ukraine defaulted on their debts after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 spurred instability in global financial markets.

Just as 1998 saw a wave of defaults, 2020 was a year marked by major debt upheavals. Due to the pandemic and collapsing oil prices, it was a record year for sovereign defaults, reaching seven in total. Among these, Lebanon, Ecuador, and Argentina saw the largest defaults amid deepening fiscal pressures.