How 100 iPads Were Used to Save Greece $140 Billion

Bob Apfel of Bondholder Communications Group explains to FORTUNE how iPads were used to help complete the debt restructuring of Greece.

Greece, as you may recall, was facing bankruptcy this spring, unable to make good on debts worth, on paper, more than $270 billion. In a series of complex restructuring transactions, the country's Finance Ministry had offered to settle for a fraction of the bonds' paper value. But getting roughly 100,000 bondholders scattered around the globe -- from Russia to South Africa to Kazakhstan -- to sign off on the deal on a tight deadline was going to be a logistical nightmare.

The solution was to purchase 100 iPads, equip them with a custom debt restructuring app, and distribute them to government and bank representatives. The app gave participants analytic tools and real time secure connections to global clearing systems and the back offices of banks.


"During the lead-up to the launch," says Apfel, "members of the financial leadership team were spending over half their time on the road, meeting with investors or financial overseers from the EU and other parts of the troika. There was a palpable need to create a financial decision-makers' platform that could follow the financier – not vice versa."

Apfel describes how the transaction played out: "I watched hundreds of millions of bonds being 'slam dunked' as these guys were running down the halls," says Apfel. "Split-second decisions were made that couldn't have been made without the data platform."

FORTUNE notes that when the last deal closed on April 25th, $270 billion in Greek debt had been reduced to $130 billion.

"It was the largest financial transaction in the history of the world," said Apfel. "And we couldn't have done it without the iPad."


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