The pressure on the Argentine peso showed no sign of letting up on Friday, with the currency sinking to a new low even after the country bit the bullet and turned to the IMF for help in stabilising the economy, the Financial Times reported. The peso slumped 5.4 per cent to 24.00 in early trade, according to Thomson Reuters data. The country’s benchmark Merval stock market snapped a two-day winning streak to trade 2.8 per cent lower, while the country’s century bond slipped again to trade at just a little over 87 cents on the dollar.

A year ago, Argentina was the darling of global investors. So much so that, when it issued a pioneering 100-year bond, with a yield of just 7.9 per cent, investors gobbled it up — ignoring the fact that the country has defaulted eight times in the past 200 years, the Financial Times reported. Whoops! This week President Mauricio Macri asked the IMF for help, after the peso tumbled to record lows. And that century bond? After rising to 105 per cent of its face value late last year, it is now trading nearer to 85 per cent.

Argentina is seeking a “stand-by arrangement” with the International Monetary Fund, according to the government, signalling its willingness to sign up to one of the organisation’s traditional economic adjustment programmes — complete with potentially politically controversial conditions and oversight, the Financial Times reported. Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s Treasury minister, had an “introductory meeting” with the IMF’s Alejandro Werner on Wednesday to discuss how negotiations will proceed. Officials estimated they could take around six weeks.

Argentina asked the International Monetary Fund for financing to help stem a five-month-rout in the peso that is sparking a surge in interest rates and threatening to derail the country’s economic recovery, Bloomberg News reported. “This will allow us to face the new global scenario and avoid a crisis like the ones we have faced before in our history," President Mauricio Macri said in a televised address Tuesday. The president didn’t state how much money was being requested but a person with direct knowledge of the talks said officials are seeking a flexible credit line worth $30 billion.

Count Argentina’s smaller companies among the victims of the three surprise interest-rate increases that are rippling through the economy, according to Federico Mac Dougall of First Corporate Finance Advisors SA, Bloomberg News reported. Mac Dougall, the Buenos Aires-based firm’s head of restructuring, said the number of distressed companies seeking his advice has tripled this year, pushing it to levels he hasn’t seen since 2003 following Argentina’s sovereign default.

Since his 2015 election, President Mauricio Macri has pushed to reconnect Argentina to the global financial system, after years of isolation. His approach — emphasizing lower tariffs, accurate economic data, trade pacts and the freer flow of capital — was largely aimed at coaxing foreign investment back to Argentina and ending the economic exile that followed the country’s default in 2001. But over the last week, Argentina has been reminded that when capital is free to flow in, it can also flow out, creating profound economic implications, the International New York Times reported.

An investment fund that’s seeking a payout from the Cuban government on more than $1.3 billion in defaulted debt and back interest has hired the lawyer who won a settlement for hedge funds in a long-running legal battle against Argentina, Bloomberg News reported. CRF I Ltd. contracted Matthew McGill, a partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, to represent it in its claim against Cuba “including potential litigation,” according to a letter from the firm provided to Bloomberg News by a fund investor.

A strengthening dollar pushed Argentina to raise its policy interest rate 3 percentage points on Friday to 30.25 per cent, underscoring the mounting pressure on emerging market currencies. The rate rise ended a week in which Argentina’s central bank spent about $3bn to support the currency, which has lost more than a quarter of its dollar value over the past year, the Financial Times reported.

The Argentine government rebuffed an investor proposal that it should request a flexible credit line from the International Monetary Fund to shore up the nation’s finances, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal was discussed with Finance Minister Luis Caputo and his team the week of March 4 at private meetings on the sidelines of a larger gathering of about 50 investors in New York, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the talks were private.

You'd think that steering a country away from the brink of economic catastrophe might buy a young administration some slack, but not in Argentina, where tolerance for anything short of miracle-making runs thin, a Bloomberg View reported. So maybe it's no surprise that less than two years after taking office and announcing a 21st-century Marshall Plan, President Mauricio Macri is struggling not just to fix South America's second-largest market, but to salvage his career as well.