A share issue in Venezuela, the world’s worst-performing economy
An investment in the stockmarket is not as nutty as you might think
SOME WONDERED if the bosses of Venezuela’s oldest rum company had been sampling too much of their product. In January, with Venezuela in one of the deepest recessions in modern world history, Ron Santa Teresa launched the country’s first public share issue in more than a decade. The new equity was priced in bolívares, the world’s worst performing currency. Others speculated that the rum-maker, which cheekily notes on its website that its distillery in the Aragua valley near Caracas has survived “wars, revolutions, invasions, even dictators”, had decided that change was afoot.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Rum raisin’”
From the February 8th 2020 edition
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