Brazilian telecom carrier Oi SA reported a steepening second-quarter net loss on Wednesday, confounding expectations for a narrower shortfall, as debt servicing costs rose and the real currency weakened, Reuters reported. In a securities filing, the company posted a quarterly loss of 1.559 billion reais ($384.81 million), compared to a loss of 1.258 billion reais in the same period of the previous year. Analysts on average expected a net loss of 437 million reais, according to Refinitiv data.

Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA has proposed cutting the debt of its ethanol unit Atvos by between 35% to 75%, newspaper Valor Economico reported on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Citing court documents, Valor said Odebrecht proposed a 35% haircut on secured debt and 75% on the unsecured debt of its ethanol unit. Atvos debt subject to restructuring, excluding credits owed to other units of the Odebrecht conglomerate will have a global haircut of 46%, reducing its total financial debt from 10.5 billion reais ($2.65 billion) to 5.7 billion reais, the newspaper said.

Samarco Mineracao SA, the Brazilian mining venture that hasn’t operated since a deadly dam collapse in 2015, is close to regaining a license to restart production and move closer to paying back $3.5 billion in defaulted debt, Bloomberg News reported. The license will most likely be granted within the second half of this year, the Minas Gerais state environmental agency press department said in an email. A Samarco spokeswoman declined to comment. Negotiations with creditors will resume in October following the license renewal, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.

President Jair Bolsonaro will give Brazilians early access this year to as much as 30 billion reais ($8 billion) in funds normally set aside for the unemployed in an effort to spur the country’s moribund economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. A measure announced Wednesday by Economy Minister Paulo Guedes will allow Brazilian workers, starting in September, to take up to 500 reais of the money currently reserved in accounts set up by law by employers for workers who lose their jobs.

As negative yields engulf everything from Brazil’s state oil company to Hungarian sovereign debt to euro junk, investors are seeking refuge in high-yield bond ETFs, Bloomberg News reported. Europe-listed funds have attracted over 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) since January, more than in any full year going back to at least 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The largest exchange-traded fund tracking the debt -- BlackRock Inc.’s 8.5 billion-euro IHYG -- took in 640 million euros in the week ended July 5, smashing a record it set just two weeks before, the data show.

Brazilian telecom carrier Oi SA disclosed on Tuesday a new strategic plan aiming to divest up to 7.5 billion reais ($2 billion) in non-core assets and focus on its fiber-to-home (FTTH) broadband service, Reuters reported. The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2016 to restructure approximately 65 billion reais of debt, plans to sell towers, data centers, real estate assets, its Angolan subsidiary Unitel and other non-strategic assets between 2019 and 2021.

A Brazilian appeals court judge has allowed bank creditors of Odebrecht SA to take possession of shares in petrochemical company Braskem SA pledged as collateral for loans they made to the corruption-ensnared conglomerate, according to a document seen by Reuters. The new injunction, granted on Wednesday in favor of Brazil’s largest lender, Itau Unibanco Holding SA, overturns a ruling banning any sale or possession of Braskem shares by banks, Reuters reported. State-controlled lender Banco do Brasil has filed a similar request.

The perceived risk of Latin America’s largest economy has dropped to a five-year low as President Jair Bolsonaro’s proposed overhaul of the country’s pension system nears a key vote in Congress, Bloomberg News reported. The cost to insure Brazil’s debt against default for five years narrowed to as low as 138 basis points over comparable U.S. Treasuries Tuesday morning, the tightest since September 2014, three months before the onset of a crushing two-year recession in the country.

Brazil’s state-controlled bank Caixa Economica Federal SA is challenging a decision by corruption-ensnared conglomerate Odebrecht SA to include one of its units’ foreign bondholders in its bankruptcy protection filing, according to a document filed in the court case, Reuters reported. Among the 21 Odebrecht affiliates that filed for the bankruptcy proceeding two weeks ago was Odebrecht Finance, the issuer of $3 billion in bonds guaranteed by the group’s construction unit OEC.

Brazilian bank Itaú Unibanco Holding SA is questioning a decision by the judge in charge of Odebrecht bankruptcy related to a stake owned by the conglomerate in petrochemical producer Braskem SA, Brazilian newspaper Valor Economico reported on Tuesday. Itaú has not formally challenged the judge decision, but just asked the judge to reconsider it, Valor said, citing people with knowledge of the matter, Reuters reported. Odebrecht and Itau did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The case is under seal and not publicly available.