Brazil

Brazil’s economic crisis is as bad as its political one, The Wall Street Journal reported. Latin America’s biggest economy appears headed for one of its worst recessions ever. It stalled in 2014, shrank 3.8% last year and now faces a similar contraction this year. Unemployment rose to 9.5% on Thursday as wages fell 2.4%, both trends forecast to worsen. One in five young Brazilians is out of work, and Goldman Sachs says Brazil may be facing a depression. The deteriorating outlook forms a dire backdrop for Brazil’s political straits.

Brazil’s economic quagmire, with an ever-growing corruption scandal on top of the longest and deepest recession in at least a century, is producing an unprecedented era of corporate debt restructuring in the country, Bloomberg News reported. The borrowing binge Brazilian companies went on during the country’s economic boom earlier this decade has now turned into an albatross as tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets and lawmakers move toward impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.

A Brazilian judge on Tuesday sentenced Marcelo Odebrecht, the former chief executive officer of South America’s biggest construction company, to 19 years in prison for his involvement in a sprawling corruption scandal centered on Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, The Wall Street Journal reported. The scion of a billionaire family, 47-year-old Mr. Odebrecht was convicted of money laundering, corruption and organized crime. He was CEO of Odebrecht SA when he was arrested and jailed last June. He later resigned from the company founded by his grandfather.

Brazil’s economy suffered its biggest contraction in 2½ decades last year as the country’s recession stretched through the fourth quarter with little sign of abating, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product shrank 3.8% in 2015, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said Thursday. That was the biggest drop since 1990, when the economy contracted 4.3%. But in contrast to that downturn, which was preceded and followed by at least modest expansions, few economists predict a recovery soon for Latin America’s biggest economy.

Brazil’s real weakened after inflation surprisingly accelerated and as Goldman Sachs said the currency is poised to drop another 11 percent this year while the government struggles to contain consumer-price increases and shore up its budget, Bloomberg News reported.

Brazil’s real weakened after inflation surprisingly accelerated and as Goldman Sachs said the currency is poised to drop another 11 percent this year while the government struggles to contain consumer-price increases and shore up its budget, Bloomberg News reported.

Sete Brasil Participações SA plans to file for bankruptcy protection if state-controlled oil producer Petróleo Brasileiro SA, the rig builder's sole client, fails to present a final lease contract proposal in a week's time, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Friday, Reuters reported. Both Sete Brasil and Petrobras declined to comment.

Creditors of Brazilian engineering group Schahin, which was snared in the country's biggest-ever corruption investigation, may reject a recovery plan in a vote at a Wednesday assembly, according to newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. Estado reported, without saying how it obtained the information, that banks holding Schahin's debt found the plan to be unrealistic and ongoing negotiations to be unproductive. A Schahin representative had no immediate comment on the report.

Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called on Congress to approve a new tax on financial transactions and other potentially unpopular bills to balance the nation’s finances and reverse a deep recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Rousseff, who is being targeted for impeachment by the lower house, addressed the congress in the legislative year’s opening ceremony for the first time since 2011, a sign of the high stakes for her administration. “Growth requires fiscal stability,” she said at the opening ceremony.

Brookfield Asset Management Inc has withdrawn an offer to buy the 24.4 percent stake in infrastructure company Invepar held by Brazil's Grupo OAS SA because Brookfield would not have full management control of the company, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation said on Monday, Reuters reported. Brookfield failed to reach an agreement with OAS's partners in Invepar, pension funds Previ, Petros and Funcef, over management control of the firm, said the sources, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.