Venezuela's future remains unclear after the US launched a ground attack over the weekend and toppled President Nicolas Maduro. But amid the uncertainty, some investors see the potential for lucrative, long-term opportunities in the South American country, which has long been closed to much international business.
At least that's what Charles Myers, chairman of the consulting firm Signum Global Advisors, believes.
“This is a big infrastructure project, I think it could be up to $500 billion over the next 10 years,” Myers said Monday on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street.”
“I think people are way too pessimistic. This is a huge opportunity in many sectors,” said Myers, who is organizing a trip to Venezuela in March with “investors, multinationals and asset managers.”
He did not name the other people who would accompany him on the trip, which he said was being organized independently by the State Department and the U.S. government.
Others see the situation as more tense.
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured on January 3 and brought to the United States. President Donald Trump subsequently said the U.S. would rule Venezuela and threatened in an interview with The Atlantic that incumbent President Delcy Rodriguez would “pay a very high price, probably higher than Maduro” if she defies his administration's actions.
Rodriguez initially rejected Trump's comments, but more recently has signaled his willingness to work with the United States
Until more details emerge about the state of Venezuela post-Maduro, some still consider the country closed for business.
“If you think about the current regulations and the investment environment, nothing has changed — at least not yet,” said Robert Koenigsberger, managing partner and chief investment officer of Gramercy Funds Management.
“An investor can't just fly into Caracas – if the airport were open – and just start knocking on doors, meeting people and saying 'hey,'” he said. “Venezuela is littered with sanctioned individuals.”
Myers noted that foreign investment would depend largely on security guarantees, although he said the U.S. military presence off the coast of Venezuela was reassuring. And he acknowledged that sanctions were a limiting factor but said he would not be surprised if some of them were lifted in the coming months.
Further opening up the country – such as Venezuela's return to debt capital markets and the reactivation of the Caracas Stock Exchange – could spur even greater investment down the road, he said.
“This isn't a short-term investor trip. It's a chance to get in and really hit the ground running,” Myers said.
Still, in the immediate aftermath of Maduro's ouster, oil and gas companies appeared poised to profit, even if it pleases the big players Chevron, Exxon Mobil And ConocoPhillips have largely remained silent as their stocks rose.
Chevron shares rose 5% as the only U.S. company currently operating in the country was seen by some investors as the eventual big winner as the country's oil infrastructure rebuilds. The move made Chevron the biggest gainer in the Dow Jones industrial average on Monday.
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, but most major U.S. oil companies have been banned from the country since former President Hugo Chávez seized U.S. assets in 2007.
In a press conference on Saturday, Trump called on major US oil companies to invest billions of dollars in the country to rebuild their infrastructure.
But the opportunities in Venezuela go far beyond oil and gas, Myers said, and those planning to join him also come from the construction, automotive, defense and chemical mining industries.
“And then on the asset management side, it's hedge funds and some long-only investors and possibly sovereign wealth funds,” Myers said.
Myers has led similar trips to war-torn countries amid political unrest in recent years. In October 2025, he took 27 clients to Damascus, Syria, after Trump lifted sanctions on the country, which had been embroiled in civil war for more than a decade. And in early 2025, Myers led a trip to Ukraine that included TCW Funds, Lazard and Siemens, Bloomberg reported.
“People try to compare Venezuela to Iraq,” Myers said. “The more relevant analogy, in our opinion, is actually either East Germany in the 1990s or Hungary/Poland as those economies transitioned from communist to capitalist economies.”
CNBC's Spencer Kimball contributed to this report.