Brazil

The board of Oi SA on Wednesday approved a plan to raise 8 billion reais ($2.5 billion) in fresh capital from shareholders and investors as a way to accelerate the Brazilian wireless carrier's emergence from bankruptcy, Reuters reported. In a statement, Oi said the terms of the capital raise will be discussed with creditors and proceeds will be used to raise the carrier's investments in broadband and wireless coverage.

For more than a year, Oi SA has struggled to reach a deal with various factions jockeying for a leg up in its $19 billion bankruptcy case, Bloomberg News reported. Almost entirely absent from that process? The company’s single biggest creditor. Brazil’s government claims that Oi owes telecom regulator Anatel as much as 20 billion reais ($6.1 billion), but current law forbids the agency from accepting any sort of haircut or extending the payment schedule.

A year into its bankruptcy saga, Oi SA is reinforcing to the rest of the world that Brazil is a hazardous place even for the most experienced of investors. In the two decades since the telecom giant was privatized, it’s been strong-armed into disastrous acquisitions and turned into a dumping ground for the debt of its controlling shareholders, Bloomberg News reported. It was used by Brazil’s government to push political policies and was saddled with regulations that drained it of cash.

Oi SA has unveiled a plan that facilitates the early repayment of small debts to suppliers and contractors, as Brazil's No. 4 wireless carrier seeks to emerge faster from creditor protection, Reuters reported. The plan was made public in newspaper ads on Friday. Under its terms, all creditors will be eligible for an early repayment of their debts to a maximum limit of 50,000 reais ($15,000) each. According to Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder, the plan seeks Oi's so-called Classes 1, 3 and 4 of creditors to negotiate ahead of a vote on the carrier's bankruptcy plan.

Brazilian banks are wrestling with a growing pile of assets they’d rather not own: at least 13.8 billion reais ($4.2 billion) of cars, real estate, equipment and other collateral seized when borrowers defaulted on their loans, Bloomberg News reported. The total surged 42 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier at eight of the nation’s biggest lenders as fallout from the worst recession in Brazil’s history continues to weigh on banks’ finances, according to the companies’ financial statements.

Brazilian banks are wrestling with a growing pile of assets they’d rather not own: at least 13.8 billion reais ($4.2 billion) of cars, real estate, equipment and other collateral seized when borrowers defaulted on their loans, Bloomberg News reported. The total surged 42 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier at eight of the nation’s biggest lenders as fallout from the worst recession in Brazil’s history continues to weigh on banks’ finances, according to the companies’ financial statements.

CSN’s failure to deliver its financial statements is stymieing talks with creditors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Latin America’s most indebted steelmaker has yet to file audited financial statements for 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 amid a review of its accounting practices, Bloomberg News reported. Now, state banks Caixa Economica Federal and Banco do Brasil are balking at requests to renegotiate Cia. Siderurgica Nacional SA’s loans, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private.

Óleo e Gás Participações SA , the oil firm founded by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, said on Friday it filed for permission from a court in Rio de Janeiro to exit bankruptcy, Reuters reported. In a securities filing, it said it has fulfilled all its obligations under its court reorganization plan. OGPar, as the company is known, entered bankruptcy status to protect itself from creditors in October 2013. It sought to restructure 13.8 billion reais ($4.25 billion) of debt. In June 2014, creditors approved a debt restructuring program by a 90 percent margin, according to the securities filing.

Brasil Distressed, the troubled-asset buyer also known as BrD, shuffled its partnership and said it plans to step up purchases this year, Bloomberg News reported. BrD aims to invest in as much as 1.5 billion reais ($460 million) in soured debt from mid-size Brazilian companies, two-thirds more than it bought last year, Carlos Catraio, a managing partner, said in an interview. The firm has purchased about 3 billion reais in debt since it was created in 2010.

Creditors of Brazil's Oi SA filed a motion this week in U.S. bankruptcy court to pressure the telephone operator to consider a proposal which could give lenders control of the restructured company, a source close to the lenders said. The creditors believe that a U.S. filing made on Monday in the Southern District of New York will allow them the right to reject the company's reorganization plan in the United States if it is confirmed in Brazil without their input, the source said.