The main shareholders at embattled Brazilian retailer Americanas SA tentatively have agreed to retain their stake for about three years as part of a restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported. The precise lock-up period for the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Sicupira is still under discussion and creditors are requiring it to last into 2027 as a guarantee shareholders will keep helping to rescue the company, the people said, asking not to be named because the negotiations are not public. Lemann, Telles and Sicupira declined to comment.

Brazilian economists have reduced their long-term inflation expectations, putting an end to months of unchanged projections that the central bank had cited as a cause for concern, Reuters reported. According to the median forecast of a weekly central bank survey on Monday, 2025 inflation projections now stand at 3.9%, down from the previous estimate of 4.0% calculated since March 24. The expectation for 2026 has also decreased to 3.88% from the previous 4.0% forecast since March 17.

Investment bankers are counting on massive auctions of energy transmission lines for a pickup in Brazil’s share sales, Bloomberg News reported. Projects demanding as much as 70 billion reais ($14 billion) in investments are expected to be auctioned through the end of 2024 and lure several publicly traded Brazilian firms. These companies, in turn, will likely need to fund their growth through local-debt issuances and share offerings, according to Felipe Thut, the head of Banco Bradesco SA’s investment-banking arm. “The utilities sector is this year’s hottest,” Thut said in an interview.

Investor Nelson Tanure said he’ll vote in favor of the bankruptcy process for Rio de Janeiro’s power company Light SA at a Wednesday shareholders’ meeting, making the approval of the measure practically certain, Bloomberg News reported. “We are looking for a completely uniform direction for the company,” Tanure said in an interview. Tanure, a veteran investor in distressed assets in Brazil, holds a 21.8% stake in Light through the fund WNT Gestora de Recursos Ltda, after starting to buy shares when they went declined this year.

Consumer prices in Brazil decelerated more than expected in May, government data showed on Wednesday, with 12-month inflation hitting its lowest level in more than two years and dropping below the 4% mark for the first time since late 2020, Reuters reported. The figures are likely to add weight to calls by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government and business people for the central bank to lower its key interest rate from the current six-year high of 13.75%.

Brazil's central bank abstained from involvement in developing the government's comprehensive consumer debt renegotiation program unveiled on Monday, two central bank directors said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Speaking at a news conference, Renato Gomes, the director of the financial system organization, said that policymakers solely furnished information without actively contributing to the program's design.

Brazil’s securities regulator filed the first charges involving the accounting scandal and bankruptcy at retail giant Americanas SA, Bloomberg News reported. The CVM, as the regulator is known, accused the company’s ex-chief executive officer Sergio Rial over “inconsistencies” in the disclosure of a 20 billion reais ($4 billion) accounting hole to the market.

Across Brazil’s dilapidated credit markets, investors are starting to whisper a new mantra in the face of double-digit interest rates and corporate malaise: The pain can’t last forever, Bloomberg News reported. The desperation for easier credit conditions is palpable nine months after central bankers in Latin America’s largest economy pinned their benchmark interest rates at 13.75%. Bond deals are still struggling to gain traction, bankruptcies are rising and investors keep on pulling cash out of Brazilian domestic bond funds.

Brazil’s economy roared back in the first months of 2023, lifted by bumper harvests that outweighed the drag of double-digit borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. Official data released on Thursday showed gross domestic product expanded 1.9% in the January-March period from the previous quarter, much more than the 1.2% median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. From a year ago, the economy grew 4%. A rebound in Brazil’s agriculture and a strong labor market helped deliver far better results than economists had forecast at the start of 2023, though few see it lasting.

Brazil's economy likely surged back to growth in the first quarter of the year, powered by record-breaking crops and solid crude oil output that more than offset the drag of subdued manufacturing activity, a Reuters poll of economists showed. Strong exports by commodities-producing sectors were seen adding to resilient private consumption in lifting gross domestic product (GDP), despite the negative effects of high interest rates and a worrying rise in government debt.