Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Tuesday, May 26. In today's briefing, Centerview Partners and French investment banker Matthieu Pigasse have secured a massive mandate to advise Venezuela on restructuring its $150 billion in unpaid debts following a high-stakes lobbying effort at the White House.

The French investment banker Matthieu Pigasse arrived at the private screening of Melania Trump’s documentary at the White House on the cusp of winning one of the biggest deals of his career.

A supporter of the Socialist Party in France and critic of the Israeli government, the Centerview banker was an unusual guest at the exclusive Trump event, featuring the president, Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and tech executives such as Apple’s Tim Cook.

Pigasse was angling to win the job of helping Venezuela restructure around $150 billion in unpaid debts and repair the country’s standing with investors around the world. It would be a career-defining assignment and, if done right, would catalyze an economic renaissance bringing capital back to a country that has been a financial pariah for nearly a decade.

Detroit’s bankruptcy case has officially ended more than 11 years after the city emerged from court protection.

Judge Thomas Tucker of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit this week granted the city’s request for a final decree closing the case. The milestone arrives nearly 13 years after the city filed for protection, following decades of industrial decline in the Midwest metropolis.

At the time, under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager, Detroit filed for bankruptcy with more than $18 billion in liabilities, driven by a decreasing tax base due to a shrinking population and heavy pension obligations. The restructuring plan, approved in late 2014, allowed the city to shed roughly $7 billion in debt and restructure another $3 billion, freeing up roughly $150 million a year to spend on city services.

A megamerger agreement last week to create America’s largest apartment owner followed years of sluggish industry profits and a rent slowdown.

Now, the deal looks like the beginning of greater consolidation for the struggling apartment sector.

AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential’s $69 billion agreement to combine firms is the most extreme sign of landlords rushing to cut costs and impress Wall Street while their market capitalizations languish below the actual value of their properties.

Insurance companies are increasingly investing policyholders’ money in private credit sold by parent firms or affiliated parties, an approach critics say sets up potential conflicts of interest.

Wall Street’s biggest private asset managers have flocked to life insurance over the past decade, viewing insurers’ huge portfolios as a perfect match for their investment products. Now insurer portfolios are filling up with products created by related private-equity firms such as Apollo Asset Management and Brookfield Asset Management. So-called affiliated assets grew 22% to a combined $127 billion over the past year for six private-equity linked life insurers tracked by The Wall Street Journal.

Venture-debt firms are expanding beyond their software industry core into a wider range of sectors and businesses following concerns of disruptions tied to advances in artificial intelligence.

While backing AI and software-as-a-service providers still anchors activity by lenders to startups and growth-stage companies, loans to healthcare technology, clean-energy and asset-heavy businesses are taking a bigger slice of the pie.

Share your tips, suggestions and feedback with the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy team: Alexander Gladstone; Jodi Xu Klein; Akiko Matsuda; Alicia McElhaney; Becky Yerak. 

Follow us on Twitter: @gladstonea; @jodixu; @AskAkiko; @AliciaMcElhaney; @beckyyerak.