Venezuela’s Potential Debt Restructuring and Economic Recovery Efforts: Some Key Legal and Policy Challenges
by | posted in: Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Steven T. Kargman (Kargman Associates/International Restructuring Advisors)

Steven T. Kargman

The article provides an overview of certain key legal and policy issues that are likely to arise in any eventual Venezuelan debt restructuring.  Specifically, the article focuses on what will likely be some of the central elements of any future debt restructuring, including the possibility of debt-for-equity swaps and oil warrants, and it also reviews various considerations in connection with a possible insolvency filing by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA.  Further, the article discusses legal and policy considerations related to economic recovery efforts that Venezuela may undertake in the future, including matters related to any efforts to revive Venezuela’s oil industry as well as any attempts to diversify Venezuela’s economy so that it is not so reliant on a single commodity, oil.  Finally, the article examines the issue of asset recovery and how a future Venezuelan regime might seek to recover assets that have been misappropriated from Venezuela.

This article recently appeared in the Venezuelan law journal, La Revista Venezolana de Legislación y Jurisprudencia (Venezuelan Journal of Legislation and Jurisprudence).  The full article can be found here.

A New PDVSA? The Transfer of Venezuela’s Oil Assets to a Successor Entity and Fraudulent Conveyance
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, International and Comparative | 0

By Richard Levin (Jenner & Block LLP) and Roland Pettersson (LEC Abogados).

This Working Paper analysis the hypothetical transfer and conveyance of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.’s assets to a new state-owned entity by the Venezuelan Government, and the possible creditor responses to such action, on account of the Venezuela’s NOC current financial-distress situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of Venezuelan law, which might provide certain legal remedies under Civil, Commercial and Administrative law—although with somehow little practical success expectations, given other factors and externalities—as well as from the perspective of U.S. law, which is of particular relevance, given (i) significant asset exposure in the U.S., where PDVSA—through CITGO—maintains an important operation, (ii) the contractual terms in the bulk of Venezuela and PDVSA’s financial indebtedness relies on U.S. law and provides for submission to the jurisdiction of NY courts, and (iii) many creditors are actually U.S. persons. Thus, this Working Paper examines the above situation, given the multiple issues and complexities on the case, starting from the very nature of PDVSA as an state-owned entity under Venezuelan law, but with particular emphasis on the creditors’ side of the equation and the theory of fraudulent transfer, which is analyzed both from the standpoint of Venezuelan law, as well as from U.S. insolvency framework and international law in general.

The full working paper is available here.

Restructuring Venezuela’s Debt: An Update
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, International and Comparative | 0

By Mark Walker (Guggenheim Securities)

Lee Buchheit and Mitu Gulati have proposed an innovative and aggressive strategy to facilitate the restructuring of Venezuela’s external debt based on consensual agreement between Venezuela and a supermajority of its broad creditor universe. Borrowing from the United Nations Security Council’s decision (supported by action of the United States) to shield Iraq’s assets from seizure by its creditors in order to promote a restructuring of Iraq’s debts, they propose that the Security Council or (more likely) the President of the United States by Executive Order shield Venezuela’s assets (particularly revenues from the sale of oil into the United States) from legal process. The rationale for their proposal rests on the premises that (1) virtually all of Venezuela’s foreign exchange is generated by sales of oil into the United States, (2) the revenues from exports of oil to the United States are vulnerable to attachment by creditors and therefore a small group of aggressive creditors could strangle the entire economy of the country, (3) existing restructuring techniques are inadequate to the task and (4) the policy of the United States is to promote the restructuring of sovereign debt based on an agreement between the debtor state and a supermajority of its creditors in the context of a process in which all creditors are bound by the vote of a supermajority.

This article argues that (1) a new Venezuelan government (which all agree is a prerequisite to a restructuring) will have substantial means to shield the country’s oil revenues from seizure by creditors, (2) a new government will also be able to expand its foreign exchange earnings to include sale of oil outside the United States, (3) the proposals do not create a mechanism to allow all of Venezuela’s creditors to have a voice in the terms of a restructuring — by supermajority or otherwise — and would treat U.S. and non U.S. creditors differently and (4) the unintended consequences of the proposals advanced by Buchheit and Gulati would negatively affect the ability of emerging market sovereigns, and Venezuela in particular, to fund themselves in the debt markets and would be disruptive of the sovereign debt market generally. Referring to the paper that the author and Richard Cooper wrote one year ago, the author argues that there are tested, market-based mechanisms to achieve the goal of a consensual restructuring arrived at by a supermajority vote of creditors, in particular a restructuring of PDVSA’s debts under a newly enacted Venezuela law that is implemented with the support of a Chapter 15 proceeding under the United States Bankruptcy Code.

The full article is available here.