After the U.S. dropped a broad array of sanctions against Venezuela in October, it warned that it could reimpose all of them, except one. The White House admitted that its ban on buying Venezuelan bonds was a failure that had potentially benefited enemies of the U.S. Behind the scenes, a group of powerful Wall Street investors had been feeding Washington a stream of evidence that showed Venezuelan bonds were being traded by investors with ties to Russia. Fidelity and T. Rowe Price each held more than $1 billion of Venezuelan bonds while Greylock had about $1.5 billion of bonds, people familiar with the matter said. Some investors expect Venezuelan bonds to be added back to JPMorgan’s closely tracked emerging-markets bond index as soon as next month, potentially giving prices another boost.

Source: Wall Street Journal February 13, 2024 15:31 UTC