By Estefanía Pozzo and Amy Booth

New York judge Loretta Preska has rejected Argentina’s request to stay an order to hand over 51% of its shares in state oil and gas company YPF to plaintiffs in the lawsuit over the company’s nationalization.

An existing stay was extended until July 17 to grant the parties more time to handle the case at the Court of Appeals.

Lawyers representing Argentina made a presentation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit following Preska’s ruling, requesting a temporary administrative stay while the appeals court considered the country’s filings.

In a ruling released Monday afternoon, Preska said that Argentina had continued to “delay and circumvent its obligations” under existing rulings in the case. This, she said, meant the country could not argue for a stay on the grounds that the ruling would produce irreparable harm, because the situation was the result of Argentina failing to take advantage of additional time it had been granted previously.

On June 30, Preska ordered Argentina to hand over 51% of its YPF shares as a partial payment to plaintiffs, who won a US$16.1 billion lawsuit over the company’s 2012 nationalization.

Argentina appealed the ruling on July 10, arguing that it violated “fundamental principles of U.S. and international law,” and asked for a stay on the handover of the shares until the appeal had been resolved. 

“Argentina will go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit so that it can decide on both the stay request and the appeal on the order to hand over the shares,” a source working on Argentina’s legal defense told the Herald. 

“It is important to highlight that Argentina is not in violation of the order, since Preska herself has given three more days to request the stay from the Court of Appeals.”

The YPF nationalization case

In 2012, Argentina’s Congress expropriated 51% of YPF shares from Spanish multinational Repsol, which was the majority shareholder at the time, giving the state majority control of the company.

Three years later, the hedge fund Burford Capital bought the trial rights from some of the minority shareholders and took Argentina to court, claiming that they had lost money because the country failed to make a tender offer for their YPF shares. 

A spokesperson for Burford told the Herald they had no comment for the time being.

Legal teams representing the companies Petersen Energía, Petersen Energía Inversora, Eton Park, Bainbridge, and Argentina will meet on Tuesday, said Sebastián Maril, a lawyer who has closely followed the case, in an X post.

Petersen and Eton are among the minority shareholders in YPF when it was nationalized. The Bahamas-based Bainbridge Fund won a lawsuit against Argentina in 2023 for US$95 million of debt securities that were defaulted in 2001. In May 2024, Bainbridge filed a motion similar to Burford’s, requesting a turnover of YPF shares as partial payment. Preska granted that in May 2025.

According to Maril, another key step is for the appeals court to decide on Argentina’s request to stay Preska’s ruling, but the date for that is uncertain.

“July 17: deadline to hand over YPF shares. If Argentina fails to comply, a contempt motion may be filed (though this is not confirmed yet),” he concluded.

Argentina has opposed the handover order, arguing that the shares are immune from turnover under U.S.’s Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and that transferring them to the plaintiffs would require the country to change or violate its own laws.

The United States government also opposed in November last year, when an attorney representing the North American administration sent a letter to Preska saying that forcing Argentina to hand over the shares could endanger U.S. interests because it could prompt foreign governments to attempt similar moves against Washington.