Brazil

President Dilma Rousseff ’s administration, fearful of a potential loss of Brazil’s investment-grade debt rating, is stepping up austerity measures, angering supporters and exacerbating an already painful economic slowdown, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government on Thursday announced a cap on government spending and investment, as well as additional tax increases for businesses, moves aimed at shoring up Brasília’s deteriorating finances. The new measures will limit federal spending to 75 billion Brazilian reais ($26.3 billion) from Jan.

As a virtual monopoly in a country with some of the most promising offshore oil reserves in the world, Petrobras has a web of relationships with most of the global leaders in the sector, the Financial Times reported. Those linked to the growing scandal, which some estimate cost Petrobras up to $20bn, will potentially face scrutiny not only from Brazilian investigators but also from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice.

Creditors of Eneva SA stand to lose as much as 65 percent of their investment in the Brazilian power producer as part of a bankruptcy protection plan unveiled on Thursday. Rio de Janeiro-based Eneva, which in December filed for protection from creditors after failing to honor part of 2.33 billion reais ($822 million) in debt, offered a lump sum of 250,000 reais to each unsecured creditor, according to a securities filing. Creditors who accept the largest discounts will be given top priority when it comes to repayments, the filing said.

The accusations of corruption at Brazil’s state-controlled petroleum giant Petrobras have already led to a political scandal and a change in management. Now, the problems are threatening other Brazilian companies and may even tip the country into recession, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. It would be hard to overstate Petrobras’s importance in Brazil.

Brazilian police said they seized seven cars, including a white Lamborghini, and $32,490 in cash, computers, watches and other items on Friday from embattled oil and mining tycoon Eike Batista, who is on trial for insider trading in Rio de Janeiro, Reuters reported. Batista resigned as chairman of Oleo E Gas Participações SA , the flagship firm in his once-expansive EBX conglomerate on Jan. 27, two months after the trial started. The company formerly known as OGX is emerging from Latin America's largest-ever bankruptcy restructuring.

A judge in Rio de Janeiro has ordered the freezing of all of embattled businessman Eike Batista ’s financial assets and ordered the seizure of up to 1.5 billion reais ($547 million) of his physical assets, including real estate, The Wall Street Journal reported. The orders cover the assets of Mr. Batista’s sons, Thor and Olin Batista, and those of his former wife, Luma de Oliveira, and his current girlfriend, Flávia Sampaio, Judge Flávio Roberto de Souza said in an interview.

A court in Brazil's São Paulo state seized on Friday 8.9 percent of the shares that construction group OAS SA has in infrastructure company Investimentos e Participações em Infraestrutura SA, alleging that the debt-ridden group is in imminent risk of insolvency. Judge Roberto Corcioli Filho of the state of São Paulo Justice Court told Reuters that he ordered the seizure at the behest of Pentágono SA DTVM, which as a trustee represents the interests of holders of 160 million reais ($60 million) in OAS local debt notes.

Brazil's Petrobras has admitted it is so far unable to calculate how much money was stolen from the company in a vast corruption scandal that has shaken confidence in the world’s second-largest emerging market, the Financial Times reported. After two months of delays, the state-controlled oil producer finally published its unaudited financial statements for the third quarter of 2014 at just after 4am on Wednesday in Brazil to avoid breaking some of its debt covenants.

Latin America is turning into the world leader in corporate-bond defaults, Bloomberg News reported. Four companies in the region have skipped dollar-denominated debt payments this month, more than any other area and almost half the total in all of 2014. In a sign bond investors are increasingly concerned about Latin American companies’ ability to repay debt, borrowers led by Mexico’s oil-rig operators have pushed the amount of the region’s bonds trading at distressed prices to $58 billion, about a third of all emerging-market debt trading at such levels.

Brazil will next month increase taxes on fuel and loans to individuals and adjust other duties to help plug the government’s yawning budget deficit, the Financial Times reported. New finance minister Joaquim Levy announced the measures on the eve of a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which he will seek to convince investors that Latin America’s biggest economy is setting its finances back on track. “The increase in revenue due to the above measures is expected to be R$20.63bn in 2015,” the finance ministry said in a statement.