Venezuela Debt Restructuring - LAZ vs CVP
In late May, the Venezuelan government solicited Centerview Partners to restructure the country’s $150BN+ debt after Maduro’s capture opened up opportunities to correct decades of economic decline. CVP has asked for a $750k montly retainer as well as 0.1% of total debt restructured, over $150MN in total fees.
However, last Friday Lazard made a late big against CVP, offering the same services for just $25MN in fees, an 83% discount. What do y’all think about this counteroffer and which bank is better suited for this kind of deal?
Based on the most helpful WSO content, both Centerview Partners (CVP) and Lazard are highly regarded in the restructuring space, but they bring different strengths to the table.
Centerview Partners (CVP):
Lazard:
Key Considerations:
Ultimately, the choice between CVP and Lazard will depend on Venezuela's priorities—whether they value a premium, high-touch advisory service (CVP) or a cost-effective, globally experienced partner (Lazard).
Sources: Goldman Sachs & Venezuelan Bonds, Evercore vs Lazard vs Jefferies, Evercore vs Lazard vs Jefferies, Top Restructuring Groups 2016, SVB vs. Guggenheim Healthcare? Which Bank is Better in 2022?
Good deal for VNZ, good deal for Lazard, the #1 sovereign advisory bank in the world
Except Lazard isn’t doing the deal
Wonder how Centerview was able to get Pigasse from LAZ
interesting read abt this situation: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/05/27/french-banker-land…
Can you drop the full article
On February 11, the banker Matthieu Pigasse arrived at the Cayena Hotel in Caracas to offer his services to the Venezuelan government. There, he crossed paths with Thomas Lambert, his rival from the Lazard bank, also vying for the contract. The two men completely ignored each other. A few weeks later, they met again in the hotel's corridors. The pressure was at its peak: Only a few days remained before the country, led by Delcy Rodriguez chose, the bank that would negotiate its debt restructuring with creditors.
In the end, Pigasse, head of the Paris branch of American investment bank Centerview, secured the deal, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, May 26, and Le Monde independently confirmed. The contract was fiercely contested by investment bankers around the world. It concerns a massive, complex and highly political restructuring, potentially comparable to the one Greece undertook in 2012. What are the amounts at stake? Investment bankers, who typically earn a commission of between €10 million and €20 million for such assignments, estimate the debt at a minimum of $170 billion, or €146 billion. But it could reach as much as $200 billion with as-yet unidentified claims. The restructuring – which will leave many losers, first and foremost China, Russia, oil companies and American investment funds – is almost unprecedented in the history of global finance.
To win the race, Pigasse (who is a member of the supervisory board of the Le Monde Group) traveled to Caracas about 10 times since the start of the year. He is no stranger to sovereign debt negotiations, having already worked with Greece, Argentina, Ukraine, Côte d'Ivoire and Ecuador. But according to him, it is above all his Venezuelan network that set him apart from rivals Rothschild and Lazard. "I know this country better than any other adviser. I started working there with Hugo Chavez in the early 2010s, then with Nicolas Maduro. I have known and worked with the new head of state, Delcy Rodriguez, for about 15 years," he said. His campaigning enabled him to outmaneuver Rothschild, which had already been active in Caracas and seemed to be in a strong position.
Accusations against a Trump associate
Beyond Venezuelan circles, it is Washington's real or supposed involvement in these negotiations that raises questions, infuriating Pigasse's competitors. "The contract secured by Centerview is bizarre. There were no bids. It is the first time a foreign power, the United States, selects the advisory bank for another country, Venezuela. The International Monetary Fund [IMF] is not even involved. If there is one place where transparency is needed, it's Venezuela," one of them said, speaking anonymously.
The accusations focus in particular on Mauricio Claver-Carone, a close associate of Donald Trump. A former special envoy for the US president to Latin America, Claver-Carone officially left the US administration in May 2025 to return to his Miami-based investment firm, Lara Fund. According to the Wall Street Journal, his intervention with both Venezuelan and US actors enabled the French banker to clinch the deal.
Pigasse denies the claim, though he has known Claver-Carone for years, having met him in the hallways of the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Have their paths crossed since then? They have, at least, grown closer: Pigasse recounted traveling to Caracas a few weeks ago by private jet from Miami. With commercial flights to Venezuela shut down, he notified the Venezuelan presidency of his arrival. The presidency requested that he take on board Jessica Bedoya, Claver-Carone's partner. This, Pigasse said, was pure coincidence: "I have never had any interaction whatsoever with US authorities on the restructuring of Venezuelan debt, nor with Mauricio Claver-Carone, alone or with others," he told Le Monde.
The Trump administration has had a firm grip on the country's affairs since US special forces captured President Maduro on January 3, in the heart of his palace.
Heavy losses
Pigasse appears to have perfectly grasped how the Trump apparatus works: He was seen at a private screening at the White House in late January of the documentary Melania, celebrating the US first lady, alongside Trump, the boxer Mike Tyson, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. His left-wing political stances do not appear to have tarnished his image in Washington.
The banker will need the backing of the US administration to carry out his mission, as well as strong support from Wall Street. The Venezuelan debt issue is sensitive in the US, where many companies claim to have been harmed by the Chavista regime. Caracas defaulted for the first time in 2017, when its economy – largely reliant on immense oil reserves, the largest in the world – suffered from falling oil prices in the 2010s. Much of the debt was issued by the national company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Sanctions imposed by Trump during his first term, along with endemic corruption and the country's increasingly authoritarian drift, turned the crisis into an economic and humanitarian disaster.
Among Caracas's main creditors are American investment funds, as well as Russia and China, historical allies of Chavism before the regime was overthrown. Oil multinationals will also play a major role in the talks: They saw their assets nationalized under Chavez and still hope to recover some of their funds. Trump made this a central argument to justify taking control of another sovereign nation's oil industry.
For all these creditors, the losses will be considerable. They will lose more than 60% of their investments, according to several consistent sources. In previous cases, creditor losses were even higher. They reached 90% in Iraq (2003), and 75% in Argentina (2005) and Greece (2012). Venezuela's aim, of course, is to wipe out as much debt as possible, and to negotiate quickly to revive the economy, bring investors back, and regain access to international payment systems.
In a statement released in mid-May, Venezuela pledged to "present its macroeconomic framework and public debt sustainability analysis to the international financial community" starting in June. Negotiations could conclude by the end of 2026 or early 2027, according to several people involved. Will all creditors be treated equally and suffer the same level of losses? The desire to move quickly appears to point in that direction. Since Europe is at risk for only a few million euros, it will have no say in the matter.
The issue is extraordinarily political, as it involves a major asset: Venezuelan oil. If they cannot recover their investments, creditors will all be tempted to demand rights over this highly strategic resource, which is state-owned. Pigasse will therefore have to juggle numerous conflicting interests. The upcoming negotiations promise to be as much about finance as geopolitics.
Get fucked Lazard. Another massive L. How shitty do you have to be for the client to turn you down despite an 85% fee discount lmao
The tombstone for this has to be the Maduro capture picture.
$25mm fee and losing to $150mm fee is crazy
I truly can’t comprehend how Lazard didn’t get the deal.
It does come across kind of slimy, undercutting their former guy for what would have been bread crumbs based on the amount of work required, but this hundreds of billions of dollars we’re talking about to restructure a country.
Is Pigasse’s expertise that much more valuable? He does have the resume, but still. Wild to undercut by that much and still not even get the deal. Huge gambit by Lazard and now they look even worse.
My guess is that Lazard’s counteroffer is so low that it undermined their own expertise. To the Venezuelan government, there must have been a reason why their bid was an 83% discount rather than something more reasonable like $100MN. Overall just bad deal psychology by Lazard. Either that or Pigasse is offering something truly special to Venezuela that we don’t know about.
Doubt it. Lazard has sufficient creds to back their expertise
What is probably happening is that out of the $150m, CVP will pay select individuals a “consulting fee” of $5m
Hard to offer that at $25m
Has to be some level of corruption involved
Seems like lots of politics and lobbying are involved in the deal. Some of the top economists from the pre-Chavez era are claiming that the real debt amount doesn’t even reach $20bn
Lazard got salty and published some gay article on Sovereign debt restructuring today on LinkedIn - lol
lol unfort this is true
Lazard is well experienced in this space and have the man power. But this is a partner origination at CVP( who left Lazard)
disgusting. hope both banks die and they get 9/11ed
and i wish every banker at these two firms to get run over by something in their lifetime
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