Senior Managing Director
Newstate Partners, LLP
Rafael has 25 years of experience advising a wide range of clients on finance related matters, including liability management strategies aimed at optimizing debt service profiles and yield curves, enhancing risk management practices, and the financing of sustainable infrastructure projects. His experience includes:
Advising governments around the world in addressing public sector debt challenges, including the restructuring of public sector liabilities and the enhancement of risk management operations.
Advising governments on the formulation and implementation of targeted liability management strategies.
Advising sovereign fixed-income creditors and creditor committees on consensual negotiations to settle outstanding public sector claims.
Rafael is currently leading the mandate advising the Surinamese Bondholder Committee in negotiations with the authorities in Paramaribo to restructure outstanding Euro notes. Most recently, he advised the Government of Zimbabwe on the settlement of the Global Compensation Deed and the Government of Antigua and Barbuda on the formulation and implementation of a strategy for debt-for-climate swaps. Rafael also advised the Government of Sudan on the formulation of the country’s external debt relief and arrears clearance under the HIPC framework and led the mandate advising Liberia on the resolution of external commercial claims, also under the HIPC framework.
A list of additional selected clients include the governments of Armenia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Peru, and Sierra Leone, among others. He has also served as financial adviser to the Central Banks of Barbados and Indonesia, selected real money funds holding sovereign exposures, as well as acted for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on issues related to public finance.
Rafael spent over eight years with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he performed several finance related functions including senior trader-analyst in the Foreign Exchange Department of the Markets Group, where he was responsible for implementing U.S. monetary policy directives and managing the U.S. monetary authorities’ yen reserve portfolio.