Brazil

OAS SA, the Brazilian builder that skipped bond payments this month as it tries to restructure debt, is seeking a 2 billion-real ($760 million) loan that would be repaid with proceeds from asset sales, three people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The loan would be backed by OAS’s stake in Invepar, an airport and toll-road operator, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Other assets might also be pledged as collateral. The Sao Paulo-based company, which has a stake of 24.4 percent in Invepar, said Jan.

Brazil’s Planning and Budget Ministry ordered the federal government to cut some spending until the country’s congress approves a budget law for 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported. The measure, which is more restrictive than existing rules, is another sign new Finance Minister Joaquim Levy and his economic team, which includes Planning and Budget Minister Nelson Barbosa, are serious about getting public finances in order, economists said. The order, announced Thursday, will save 1.9 billion reais ($708 million) a month, according to Brazil’s Planning and Budget Ministry.

President Dilma Rousseff said she will tighten Brazil’s budget, increase investment and productivity in an effort to restart economic growth, while minimizing “sacrifices” by the population, Bloomberg News reported. “We will prove that economic adjustments are possible without revoking acquired rights or betraying our social obligations,” Rousseff said Thursday during the swearing-in ceremony for her second term.

There are not many executives who have asked their boss three times whether they should be fired and survived. Maria das Graças Foster, chief executive of Petrobras, Brazil’s crisis-stricken state-owned oil company, says she’s one, the Financial Times reported. She has offered her resignation to Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, on multiple occasions in recent weeks but her close friend of more than a decade has stuck by her — so far.

Creditors approved Brazilian shipbuilder OSX Brasil SA's revamped plan to emerge from bankruptcy late on Wednesday, giving a boost to efforts by controlling shareholder Eike Batista to keep the company afloat while refinancing over $2.6 billion in debt, Reuters reported. OSX's own bankruptcy protection plan, as well as those from subsidiaries OSX Construção Naval SA and OSX Serviços Operacionais Ltda, were approved by an assembly of creditors in Rio de Janeiro, according to a securities filing. OSX had introduced a revamped plan a month ago.

Eneva SA, the ailing Brazilian producer controlled by Germany's E.ON SE, filed late on Tuesday for credit protection in a Rio de Janeiro court after failing to refinance part of its 2.33 billion reais ($900 million) in outstanding debt, Reuters reported. In a statement, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said the bankruptcy protection petition will allow it to preserve cash and continue its operations. Banks, which were the biggest chunk of Eneva's creditors, refused to renew an accord to refinance the company's debt after expiring Nov. 21, the statement noted.

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.