Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. In April 2012, Argentina expropriates the 51% of YPF held by Repsol. How is compensation finally settled?
By 5 billion dollars in Argentine bonds, in February 2014
The February 2014 agreement set Repsol's compensation at 5 billion dollars, paid in government bonds rather than cash: even the clearest direct expropriation is often settled in securities of the very state that expropriated. The 16.1 billion is a separate matter, the September 2023 judgment in favor of former minority shareholders, for failing to make the tender offer the bylaws required.
Glossary entry →2. Over five years, a host state imposes a windfall extraction tax, caps dividend repatriation, requires a 51% local partner, then refuses to renew the license. No single act is a nationalization. What is the whole called?
Creeping expropriation, judged by the cumulative effect of the measures
Creeping expropriation is recognized by cumulative effect: a series of fiscal, regulatory or administrative measures, none decisive alone, that strips the investor of the economic substance of the asset. The whole difficulty, for ICSID tribunals as for the underwriter, is to tell it apart from the legitimate exercise of regulatory power, and it is the contract that sets the thresholds at which an act becomes a loss.
Glossary entry →3. On July 16, 2023, a Russian decree places Danone Russia and Baltika, a Carlsberg subsidiary, under temporary administration. What does this regime, created by the decree of April 25, 2023, do to the groups that own them?
The state takes over management without formal transfer of ownership
Decree 302 lets the state take over the management of subsidiaries of companies from unfriendly countries without formal transfer of ownership: title stays with the groups, control does not. It is exactly the kind of act that tests the wording of a political risk policy, since it removes use and income without expropriating in the strict sense. The first targets, in April 2023, were the subsidiaries of Uniper and Fortum.
Glossary entry →4. On July 26, 2023, a coup topples Niger's president. In June 2025, the junta announces the nationalization of the Somaïr mining subsidiary. What does this delay say about the coup as an insured event?
It is not a loss in itself; it triggers the acts that are
A seizure of power is not, in itself, a covered act: expropriation, license withdrawal or non-transfer are, and they may come long after. In Niger, almost two years separate the coup from the nationalization announcement, after Orano said in December 2024 it had lost operational control of its subsidiary. The underwriter therefore reads the policy period and the date of the triggering act, not just the date of the coup.
Glossary entry →5. A state in a currency crisis freezes transfers: a foreign subsidiary has profits in local currency but can neither convert nor repatriate them. What risk is this?
Inconvertibility and non-transfer, a political risk
Currency risk concerns the price of a currency; inconvertibility concerns the very possibility of buying it or taking it out, because of a public decision. The subsidiary keeps its profits and the state does not take them, so this is not expropriation, and the state may keep servicing its debt. A forward contract protects against nothing when conversion itself is forbidden.
Glossary entry →6. Indonesia bans raw nickel exports from January 1, 2020, two years ahead of the announced date. Foreign buyers under contract are no longer supplied. What is the triggering event?
A license withdrawal decided for an industrial policy reason
The state withdrew the export permission the contracts depended on, which become impossible to perform with no fault by either party: that is the definition of license withdrawal, a political risk trigger. The cause is industrial policy, processing the ore at home, not a sanction from elsewhere nor a natural event.
Glossary entry →7. The July 2021 riots in South Africa cost SASRIA about 32 billion rand, and the state recapitalizes it with 22 billion. Why is SASRIA the one paying?
Because the cover is excluded from private policies and it alone carries it
In South Africa, riot, strike, civil commotion and terrorism are excluded from private policies and carried by a single public insurer, SASRIA. The system paid, but only because the state put in 22 billion rand: a public pool carries political violence the market will not, and the state budget is its last layer.
Glossary entry →8. After the unrest of October 2019 in Chile, what do insurers do with riot cover?
They remove it from property policies and offer it separately, more restricted
Chilean insurers took the cover out of property policies to offer it separately, on much more restrictive terms: collective violence leaves the package policy as soon as it stops being an isolated incident. In France, where package policies still cover it, the summer 2023 riots produced more than 11,000 claims for about 650 million euros according to the insurers' federation's first estimate.
Glossary entry →9. For the Cuban nationalizations of 1959 and 1960, 5,913 U.S. claims were certified, for about 1.9 billion dollars in principal. Why are they still waiting?
Because they await a state-to-state settlement, never concluded
The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission certified these claims to prepare a lump-sum settlement negotiated between states, and that agreement has never been concluded with Cuba. U.S. courts offer little else: Sabbatino (1964) raised the act of state doctrine against them, which the Hickenlooper amendment later set aside for certain expropriations, and sovereign immunity shields Cuba from suit. That is why an investment treaty and the arbitration it opens matter so much for recourse after a claim is paid.
Glossary entry →10. On July 12, 2019, an ICSID tribunal orders Pakistan to pay nearly 6 billion dollars over the refusal of the Reko Diq license. What became of the award?
It served as a bargaining chip in the 2022 deal, which returned a stake in the mine
The award was not paid as such: it served as a bargaining chip in the March 2022 deal, which returned a stake in the project to Barrick. That is the usual fate of an award against a state: its value lies less in its amount than in the weight it gives in a negotiation, which is also what an insurer subrogated to the investor's rights expects of it.
Glossary entry →