Even as Venezuela’s political stalemate drags on, the country’s options for the potential restructuring of more than $175 billion in foreign debt are coming into focus as lawyers, academics and government officials debate the proper approach, the Wall Street Journal reported. Legal and financial advisers to Venezuela’s largest known group of U.S. bondholders released a paper on Thursday proposing a road map for sorting out the country’s massive debts after the potential ouster of authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro. Discussions among U.S. bankruptcy experts have revolved around two potential strategies for sorting out who gets paid what, according to the paper’s authors, Richard Cooper of law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and Mark Walker of financial adviser Guggenheim Securities LLC. Either the White House takes executive action against creditors, or Venezuela enacts a local restructuring law capable of being honored by U.S. bankruptcy courts.
