Venezuela Faces Loss on Lehman

By DARCY CROWE - CARACAS, Venezuela -- The Venezuelan government, which this week mocked Lehman Brothers Inc.'s woes as a sign of capitalism's imminent demise, could become a victim of the investment bank's fail ure. The government of Hugo Chávez holds about $300 million in debt instruments that Lehman had agreed to cash, according to three analysts who calculated the holdings separately. With Lehman in trouble, Venezuela will have a hard time selling the debt. "The government will likely have to assume a steep loss," said Alejandro Grisanti, a senior economist with Barclay's Capital. How much will depend on what Lehman ends up paying out to creditors as a result of the bankruptcy proceedings. Government officials weren't available to comment. Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said Tuesday the government was reviewing any impact that Lehman's demise could have on Venezuela's finances. The holdings are part of a strategy by which the Venezuelan government infuses dollars into its dollar-starved, overheating economy. The system -- which relies on selling structured notes made up of the sovereign debt of other South American nations -- allows Venezuelan banks and individuals to buy dollars at the official exchange rate of 2.15 bolivars, about half the black-market rate. With annual inflation at 34.5%, analysts say the bolivar would be considerably weaker without the structured note sales. Mr . Chávez has focused less on the domestic financial risks than on the political symbolism associated with the U.S. bank's collapse. "Lehman, rest in peace," he said in a television appearance this week, in which he said the investment bank should have paid more attention to its own problems instead of releasing chastising analyst reports on Venezuela. The investment bank structured more than $1 billion in notes, according to estimates by Jose Guerra, a former Venezuelan central bank research director. The Finance Ministry could hold the notes to maturity instead of unwinding them in the hope the underlying bonds recover in value. But there is a high risk that they depreciate further. The fund in which the notes are held, Fonden, finances many of the projects that Mr. Chávez touts as part of his socialist "Bolivarian Revolution." Fonden has enough funds to easily weather the loss: it received $5 billion in the first half of this year. Write to Darcy Crowe at mailto:darcy.crowe@%20dowjones.com Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your=2 0personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit http://www.djreprints.com/