Russ Dallen


Russell Morris Dallen Jr. is a financial advisor, economist, international lawyer, and journalist. He is head of investment bank Caracas Capital Markets, managing partner at family office Ophiuchus Capital Management, strategic advisor to the exchange-traded Venezuela Opportunity Fund and publisher of the newspaper Latin American Herald Tribune.
From 2000 to 2007, he was head of the Latin American office of investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2003 he bought the 65-year-old Venezuela Daily Journal which would in 2008 become the Latin American Herald Tribune.

Education

Dallen received a B.A. and M.A. in Law from Oxford University. He has a Diploma in International Law from Nottingham University. Dallen has a B.A. in both Economics and Political Science from Ole Miss. He was a Fellow at Columbia University where he was part of a handpicked group chosen to study under former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He assisted Louis Henkin on the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States and Henkin, Hans Smit, and Oscar Schachter on the definitive West legal tome "International Law." Dallen is a member of the International Law section of the New York State Bar Association.

Writing career

Dallen is author and contributing author of several scholarly works, including 4 books, and numerous newspaper and magazine articles.
Dallen "cut his teeth" as a paperboy for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans as a teenager. In high school, Dallen was the editor of a weekly 8 page section of the Mississippi Gulf Coast newspaper, the Sun Herald.
At Ole Miss, Dallen worked for the local paper The Oxford Eagle.
At Columbia University in New York, Dallen wrote for The Daily Telegraph of London and became a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Affairs.
After interning at Newsweek while at Columbia University, Dallen went on to work as a Foreign Correspondent for Newsweek in London, taking over the position from his Oxford University classmate and fellow Newsweek intern Jacob Weisberg.
Dallen served on the board of the John Grisham-financed Southern literary magazine Oxford American.

Latin America

Dallen is a frequent commentator in print, and on radio and television about South American affairs. He is frequently called upon to speak about the region, has testified before the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate,, advised the White House and addressed the State Department, National Intelligence Council, United States Southern Command and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has lectured at universities around the world.
Dallen correctly predicted the growing divergence in economic performance between the outperforming trading-oriented free-market focused nations on the Pacific side of Latin America -- Mexico, Colombia, Chile & Peru—and the more atavistic slow-growing state-controlled economies of the Atlantic side of the continent -- Argentina, Brazil, & Venezuela.

Finance

Dallen's investing was chronicled by the Financial Times in a 2014 article, saying "... the basket of defaulted Argentina bonds, bought by Dallen for clients last year when they were trading for 30 something cents on the dollar, rose through the mid 80s to reach a bid price of 90 cents on the dollar." Dallen ultimately sold them at 150, quintupling his clients' and firm's investments.
Dallen predicted that Argentina would default again, that the country would not settle with the holdout bondholders when the Rights Upon Future Offers clause expired, and that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her party would be defeated in the 2015 Presidential elections.
In Brazil, Dallen warned about various companies that were set to tumble and lose investors' money beginning in 2013, specifically Petrobras and Eike Batista's OGX/OSX complex.
In Colombia, Dallen warned about the upcoming collapse of investor favorite Pacific Rubiales in 2013 because the company—which would default and declare bankruptcy in 2016—was "branching out into other areas that are away from their core competencies...."
In Venezuela, Dallen began pointing out shortages - including being the first to point out most famously the toilet paper shortage—in January 2013 when oil was above $100 a barrel and warning of the economic collapse that would come. At the same time, Dallen was able to double investments of his firm and clients in Harvest Natural Resources in one month before taking profits and earn a 60% return in 6 months in Venezuelan Koch brothers entity Fertinitro. In January 2015, Dallen began warning investors in U.S. based Citgo when the Venezuelan government-owned company issued $2.8 billion in new debt, not for its own corporate purposes but to send back to cash-strapped Venezuela. Canadian miner Crystallex, which won a $1.4 billion judgment against Venezuela for the expropriation of the company's mining investments in an arbitration before the World Bank's International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, would subsequently sue Citgo and PDVSA under the Delaware Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act to recover the money.
Dallen predicted in March 2016 that the Venezuela opposition strategy to achieve a Recall Referendum on the presidency of Nicolas Maduro by the end of 2016 would be frustrated by the governing regime, warning the Financial Times that "The chavistas have no place to go and they will hold on for as long as possible."
In early 2016, Dallen began warning that Venezuela would default on its billions in foreign debt, telling Reuters that "It is a question of when, not if," and noting that "The only thing that could change that is a sharp recovery in oil prices, and/or a bailout from Venezuela's friends in China, Russia or Iran."
Keying on cashflows from China and Russia, Dallen would help discover and publicize that Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA was so short of cash that they had mortgaged 49.9% of their U.S. oil refinery Citgo to Russia's state-owned oil company Rosneft and he would later be called upon to Testify about Russia's actions before Congress. Likewise, Dallen was also able to document the breakdown in good relations between China and Venezuela by discovering an international arbitration and lawsuit brought by Sinopec against PDVSA for non-payment.
By August of 2016, Dallen's cashflow models were able to accurately predict the timing of the default and CNN, in an article titled with his prediction, quoted Dallen saying that Venezuela would run out of cash "within a year."
The Financial Times in an article titled "Venezuela stopped bond payments in September" credited Dallen for the discovery and proof.
Bloomberg noted that Dallen and his investors were able to profit from his default prediction by purchasing Credit Default Swaps -- insurance against default -- for a 300% return when Venezuela and PDVSA were declared in default in November by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

Awards

Dallen's Masters thesis "An Overview of European Community Protection of Human Rights, with some Special References to the U.K.," written while at Oxford, was named "Article of the Year" by the Common Market Law Review and published in book and journal form by them.
Dallen was awarded the $40,000 Harry S. Truman Scholarship by the administration of President Ronald Reagan, making Dallen the first Truman Scholar from Ole Miss. Dallen served on the Board of Directors of the Truman Scholars Association from 2012 through 2014.
Dallen was named a Harold Wallace Rosenthal Fellow for the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Dallen would later be called upon to testify before the Committee on Foreign Relations on Venezuela. Dallen now serves on the Rosenthal Fellowship Advisory Board.
Dallen was named a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholar to Oxford University by the cabinet of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Dallen was named a Fellow in the European Union Visitors Program.
Dallen was named one of ten outstanding future leaders for America's third century by a committee headed by legendary broadcaster Tom Brokaw and Shell Oil Company President John F. Bookout.

Other

Dallen is thanked by Pulitzer Prize for Literature winner Donna Tartt in her novel The Secret History.
Dallen is a member of St. Anthony Hall.