Hugo Chavez repays his Wall Street investors without missing a beat.
Venezuela's economy has not exactly flowered under the "Bolivarian socialism" of Hugo Chavez, but there are some investors who have made out quite well:
Since taking office in 1999, Hugo Chavez has spread his socialist revolution in Venezuela by seizing more than 1,000 companies. For bondholders that stuck by him, heâ??s also delivered returns that are double the emerging- market average.The 681 percent advance, equal to 14.7 percent annually, has enriched investors from OppenheimerFunds Inc. to Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP that counted on Chavezâ??s willingness to siphon the countryâ??s oil wealth to pay its creditors in the face of start-stop growth and falling reserves. While his policies drove away enough investors to keep Venezuelaâ??s borrowing costs over 12 percent on average during his tenure, or 4 percentage points higher than those of developing nations, heâ??s never missed a bond payment.
â??This is a really great high-income and high-total-return investment for your portfolio,â? said Sara Zervos, an emerging- market debt manager at New York-based OppenheimerFunds, which oversees $176 billion in assets and has invested in Venezuelan notes for more than a decade. â??Chavez hasnâ??t done a lot of good for his country, but he has the objective to service the bonds. Our interests are aligned.â?
Indeed.
