Brazil

Brazilian officials are pushing conservative policies that President Dilma Rousseff recently criticized as a threat to the poor, amid investors’ calls to shore up her government’s credibility and avoid a credit-rating downgrade, The Wall Street Journal reported. Members of Ms. Rousseff’s newly appointed economic team are signaling that they are considering unpopular measures such as tax increases and spending cuts, which the Brazilian leader adamantly opposed during her recent re-election campaign. Her administration has also cut to 0.8% from 3% Brazil’s 2015 growth forecast.

Interest rates in Brazil would make an American loan shark blush. Credit cards charge more than 240 percent a year. Bank loans top 100 percent, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. For a rising number of consumers in need of cash, a pawnshop is actually the better option. When Angela Pereira, a stay-at-home mother in São Paulo, needed extra money to buy her daughter school supplies, she pawned a gold chain to get 530 reais, or about $210.

Brazil clawed out of recession in the third quarter on the back of government spending, but the outlook for Latin America’s biggest economy remains clouded by weak investment, wary consumers and rising interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded 0.1 percent in the third quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous three months, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said on Friday.

Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona SA, the Argentine wind-turbine maker owned by the Pescarmona family and known as Impsa, agreed to sell holdings in wind parks in Brazil to a local developer as it prepares to restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported. Ventos de Sao Jorge Energias Renovaveis SA, a Fortaleza, Brazil-based wind-power developer owned by the Salus investment fund, agreed to buy stakes in five wind farms from Impsa-run Energimp SA, according to a filing to Brazil’s antitrust regulator. The price wasn’t disclosed.

Brazil’s next finance minister, to be appointed within weeks, must wrestle with a growing government problem: not enough money, The Wall Street Journal reported. Shoring up Brazil’s books is crucial for the nation to avoid a potential credit rating downgrade, which would increase its costs of borrowing. But there are short-term economic pitfalls as well as political challenges for President Dilma Rousseff , who faces a more conservative and divided Congress than she did in her first term. Among her first tasks is avoiding Brazil’s version of the fiscal cliff.

A Brazilian court has approved a bankruptcy protection petition filed by MMX Sudeste Mineracao SA, an iron-ore mining company controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, the company said on Wednesday in a securities filing, Reuters reported. It was the third time in a year that a unit of the former billionaire's EBX industrial group has sought protection from creditors. The decision was taken by a court in Belo Horizonte in the Minas Gerais state. MMX Sudeste made the request after negotiations with creditors and efforts to seek new investors failed, MMX said in a filing on Oct. 15.

Grupo Oi SA, the Brazilian telecommunications company struggling with rising debt and shrinking market share, said the demise of an investment vehicle that owed the company's Portugal Telecom SGPS SA unit almost 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) is unlikely to impact operations, Reuters reported. In a filing with Brazil's securities watchdog CVM, Oi said its Oi, Portugal Telecom and TelPart units will not be affected by the collapse of Rioforte, as the vehicle is known.

The main subsidiary of Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's iron ore mining company MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA filed a bankruptcy protection petition before a Brazilian court on Wednesday, Reuters reported. MMX Sudeste Mineracao SA, the unit that holds MMX's main mining assets, made the request after negotiations with creditors and efforts to seek new investors failed, MMX said in a filing. MMX Sudeste is the main operating unit of MMX and is developing iron ore mines in Minas Gerais state on its own and in partnership with Usiminas, one of the largest steelmakers in the Americas.

A year after the epic collapse of his industrial empire, Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's financial and legal troubles appear far from over, Reuters reported. Once worth more than $30 billion and listed as the world's eighth-richest man by Forbes Magazine, Batista says his debts now exceed his assets by $1 billion and the value of his remaining stakes in the oil, shipbuilding, mining and transportation companies he founded continues to shrink. Batista also faces criminal and regulatory investigations into suspected insider trading and fraud.

Brazil's federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against Eike Batista, a once high-flying Brazilian businessman, compounding his legal troubles. Prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro charged Mr. Batista with financial crimes and requested the freezing of 1.5 billion Brazilian reais ($640 million) in assets belonging to the businessman and people close to him, according to documents posted on the public prosecutor's website. A judge will now examine the charges and decide if the case should go ahead, according to Sergio Bermudes, Mr. Batista's lawyer. Mr.