Venezuelan government bonds are returning to JPMorgan Chase’s largest index of emerging-market government bonds, a move likely to boost demand for the bonds among fund managers that use the bank’s widely followed benchmarks, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. JPMorgan said on Thursday that it would bring Venezuelan government debt back into the bank’s flagship emerging-market index, the EMBI Global Diversified Index, as well as one of its other benchmarks, the EMBI Global Index. The bonds, including Venezuelan sovereign debt and debts issued by state-owned oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela, were removed from JPMorgan’s indexes in 2019 after the U.S. outlawed American investors from purchasing Venezuelan bonds. The move reflects how Venezuela is reintegrating with global financial markets since the U.S. repealed a number of sanctions on the South American nation last year. Officials from the Biden administration agreed to strike down a ban on buying Venezuelan debt after Wall Street funds warned that American adversaries like Russia were using the debt bans to gain influence over the Venezuelan government.
