For years, investing in Venezuelan bonds has been a popular play for the world’s largest investors — seduced by mouthwatering interest rates, despite the obvious risks.
Now, as the bonds have plunged in value over fears that the Venezuelan government will finally default on its bond payments, many traditional investors are heading for the exits, replaced by a hardier band of funds that specialize in the debts of near-bankrupt nations.
With steel stomachs and having survived numerous byzantine debt dramas — from Argentina in 2000 to Greece in 2012 — they see Venezuela as the next great debt-restructuring payday.
“It is all about the price,” said Lee C. Buchheit, a debt specialist of 30 years’ standing at the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. “If you look at the behavior of distressed investors, they wait for the price to hit a certain threshold” — usually 20 cents on the dollar — “and we have now reached that.”
Developments have moved quickly in recent weeks, with a call to restructure, missed interest payments, a default on a power company’s bonds and an inconclusive meeting with investors on Monday. But neither Venezuela’s sovereign debt nor that of its national oil company has been declared in default by creditors, though Standard & Poor’s says the conditions exist for a default.
