TIM Participacoes, Telefonica Brasil SA and America Movil SAB de CV’s Claro won an auction on Monday to acquire the mobile operations of Brazil’s Oi SA with a joint bid of 16.5 billion reais ($3.23 billion), the companies said in a series of securities filings, Reuters reported. The winning trio, which had submitted an initial bid in July, plans to split Oi’s assets once they have antitrust approval. Oi, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016, is selling assets to repay creditors. The group was the auction’s sole bidder, according to the filings.
Brazil’s government will pardon about half of the roughly 14 billion reais ($2.6 billion) in debt owed to it by Brazilian telecom firm Oi SA, the country’s solicitor general said on Friday, Reuters reported. Oi, which has been working to emerge from bankruptcy protection for years, had accumulated gargantuan fines tied to quality of services and other regulatory demands, making telecoms regulator Anatel one of the company’s biggest creditors. The settlement, with the remainder of Oi’s government debt payable in installments, puts an end to 1,700 ongoing court cases between Oi and
President Jair Bolsonaro’s stimulus spending spree won praise far and wide for saving Brazilians from the worst of the pandemic’s economic pain. But now, as the worst of the health crisis eases, anxiety is mounting in financial circles about how he’s going to pay for it, Bloomberg News reported. Investors have been unloading the currency and stocks, sparking routs that are almost unparalleled in the world this year, and they’re increasingly refusing to buy anything but the shortest of short-term government bonds.
Nextel Brazil has been rebranded as Claro-nxt after being acquired by America Movil in December last year, Developing Telecoms reported. America Movil, which operates Claro Brasil, spent US$905 million to obtain the unit from NII Holdings. Nextel subscribers have now been migrated and can access Claro’s LTE-A network, as well as benefits such as free calling and WhatsApp messages. Nextel’s former parent NII Holdings has now filed a “verified petition for dissolution” in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, reports TeleGeography.
Brazil’s economy has officially entered a recession following the swingeing impact of the coronavirus crisis, which has so far killed more than 120,000 Brazilians and pushed millions into unemployment, the Financial Times reported. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, gross domestic product shrank 9.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter, reflecting the effect of widespread economic shutdowns, which have hammered consumption and investment and triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies. Compared with the same quarter last year, GDP was 11.4 per cent lower.
Wirecard inked a deal to sell its operations in Brazil, its insolvency administrator said on Friday, the first asset of global operations to sell after the company collapsed amid an accounting scandal earlier this year, Reuters reported. An agreement in principle has also been reached to sell some operations in Britain, and the process of selling its North American operations are well advanced with a deal expected “shortly”, the administrator said.
Brazilian telecom firm Oi SA proposed amendments to its restructuring plan on Friday, urging creditors to extend new loans and to get higher bids for assets put on the block. Creditors will vote on the proposed changes on Sept. 8, as Oi plans to exit bankruptcy protection by May 2022, roughly six years after starting the process, Reuters reported. “After lots of talks, we concluded that the plan needed some more flexibility than initially foreseen,” Chief Executive Rodrigo de Abreu said in an interview.
Brazilian airline Azul SA said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement with its aircraft lessors that would help it save some 3.2 billion reais ($594.61 million) in working capital through 2021 and be repaid beginning in 2023, Reuters reported. The airline has been in negotiations with lessors as the coronavirus crisis derailed Latin America’s air travel industry in March. Azul hired a restructuring firm when the crisis set in and said it was renegotiating its debts out of court to avoid a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
Brazil's top four listed lenders are giving months-long extensions for consumers and companies to repay 235 billion reais ($43.98 billion) in outstanding loans, a move to give financially squeezed borrowers breathing room, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The loans subject to forbearance programs, which range from 13% of Banco Santander Brasil SA's portfolio to 10% of Itau Unibanco Holding SA's, are an indicator of potential defaults.