Venezuela on the brink of a cascade of debt defaults, as S&P declares it in ‘selective default’
Caracas — Venezuela faced the first of what could be a cascade of defaults on its $150bn of foreign debt on Tuesday, as Standard & Poor’s became the first credit agency to declare the crisis-torn South American country in "selective default". The US agency’s action came after Vice-President Tareck El Aissami met with creditors in Caracas on Monday but offered no way out of the impasse. S&P said it had declared Venezuela in "selective default" because it failed to make $200m in payments on two global bond issues by the end of a 30-day grace period, which fell on November 12. "We have lowered two issue ratings to ‘D’ (default), and we lowered the long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to ‘SD’ (selective default)," the agency said in a statement late Monday. It said payments on four other bonds also were overdue but still within the grace period. The overdue bond obligations total $420m, it said. The debt crunch comes as no surprise in a once prosperous oil producing countr...
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