Key Takeaways:
The French investment banker who advised on Greece's debt crisis and counts Socialist Party leaders among his allies has won the mandate to untangle one of the world's most complex sovereign defaults — a $150 billion bet on Venezuela's economic rebirth after the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela hired Centerview Partners in mid-May to restructure roughly $150 billion in unpaid sovereign and state oil company debt, tapping a banker whose politics sit opposite those of the Trump administration now calling the shots in Caracas. The mandate, one of the largest sovereign debt restructurings since Greece a decade ago, puts Matthieu Pigasse at the center of a high-stakes effort to bring capital back to a country that has been a financial pariah since defaulting in 2017.
"It's an environment that's so primitive, the idea that you're going to get this done quickly inevitably generates some doubts," said Alejandro Grisanti, director of the Caracas business consulting firm Ecoanalitica. "Venezuela doesn't just need to renegotiate its debts, it needs to rebuild trust."
Pigasse, a managing partner at Centerview who previously ran global M&A at Lazard, secured the deal with behind-the-scenes support from Mauricio Claver-Carone, President Donald Trump's former special envoy for Latin America. Claver-Carone said he expressed strong support for hiring Centerview to acting President Delcy Rodriguez and consulted with the State Department and Treasury Department. The former envoy, now managing partner of Miami-based private-equity firm LARA Fund, had worked with Pigasse on Ecuador's 2020 debt restructuring.
The appointment caught Wall Street competitors flat-footed. Rothschild, which Maduro's government had hired in 2024, had traveled to Washington in February to pitch officials. A Treasury spokesman said the decision was up to Venezuela. Venezuela's vice president for the economy, Calixto Ortega Sanchez, said the government chose Centerview because of "its deep understanding" of the country's economy and longstanding relationships.
The Geopolitical Backdrop
The restructuring follows the Trump administration's January special operation that captured Maduro and brought him to New York on drug-trafficking charges. The administration has since taken control of Venezuela's oil exports and is closely managing how revenue is distributed, pushing to revitalize an economy that contracted by more than 70 percent over the past decade.
Pigasse traveled to Caracas twice this year — in February on a private plane and again in April, staying at the Cayena Hotel, a popular haunt for bankers and oilmen — to court Rodriguez, whom he had met while advising on a possible sale of state oil company PDVSA's U.S. refining asset Citgo. He also attended the private White House screening of Melania Trump's documentary at the invitation of producer Fernando Sulichin, an Argentine with longstanding ties to Venezuelan officials.
Claver-Carone said he endorsed Centerview because of the bankers' technical expertise and his desire to oust advisers who had worked with the Maduro government, including Rothschild and law firm Dentons. "I don't do any consulting or advising for pay, and my motivation first and foremost is for President Trump's Venezuela policy to be successful," he said. A State Department spokeswoman said Claver-Carone is not working on behalf of the U.S. government.
The Restructuring Challenge
The Venezuelan government has promised to put forward an initial framework by June, a timeline many analysts see as optimistic. The country has not published comprehensive financial or economic data for much of the past decade, leaving creditors and economists guessing about how much is owed and to whom.
A key part of Centerview's pitch was speed — getting the restructuring done as fast as possible to reintegrate Venezuela into the global economy. That has drawn concern from bondholders including Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, who have discussed whether the accelerated timeline is a way to impose steep haircuts on their investments, according to people familiar with the matter.
The fees for the mandate are expected to reach tens of millions of dollars, reflecting the complexity of restructuring debt that spans sovereign bonds, PDVSA obligations, and arrears accumulated over nearly a decade of sanctions and economic collapse. The last time a sovereign of comparable scale underwent restructuring — Greece in 2012 — private creditors took a haircut of roughly 75 percent on the face value of their bonds, and the process took more than two years to complete.
For investors, the stakes are clear: a successful restructuring could unlock significant capital flows to Venezuela's energy sector, which holds the world's largest proven oil reserves, and set a template for how the Trump administration handles other sanctioned economies. A protracted fight with bondholders, by contrast, could delay the country's reentry into international capital markets and keep Venezuela in financial isolation.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
