The team advising Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido skipped a payment Monday on the nation’s only bonds not in default, setting up a legal showdown with creditors, Bloomberg News reported. Rather than pay the $913 million due on Petroleos de Venezuela’s 2020 notes, Guaido’s advisers say they will take legal action against investors to fight any efforts to seize the collateral on the bonds -- 50.1% of Citgo Holding Inc.’s shares. Their argument is that the debt is illegal because the opposition-led National Assembly never approved its issuance.

Samarco, a joint venture between Vale SA and BHP Group, on Friday won permission to resume operations at their Germano iron ore mine, the environmental regulator of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais said, roughly four years after a fatal dam collapse there, Reuters reported. Vale said in a separate release that it expected production at the joint venture, which is trying to restructure $3.8 billion in debt it defaulted on about a year after the accident, to resume toward the end of 2020.

In this South American nation stretching from lush jungles in the north to the edge of the Antarctic at its southernmost point, the country’s 45 million people are weighing a vote for change ahead of presidential elections on Sunday, Bloomberg News reported. At the heart of the decision is economic hardship that has roiled Latin America’s No. 3 economy since the middle of last year. It has hurt President Mauricio Macri, who under pressure had been pushing austerity measures to rein in debt.

At least three potential bidders have expressed an interest in buying two soy processing plants put up for sale by Brazilian grain crusher Imcopa Importação, Exportação e Indústria de Óleos SA, two sources familiar with the bidding process told Reuters. The bidders are U.S.-based Bunge Inc; CJ Selecta, owned by South Korea’s CJ Cheiljedang; and the local unit of Russia’s Sodrugestvo, according to the sources, who requested anonymity this week to discuss the confidential process, Reuters reported.

Argentina’s bondholders are braced for steep losses when the government attempts to tackle its $101bn debt burden after downbeat meetings with IMF officials and associates of Alberto Fernández, the presidential frontrunner, in Washington last week, the Financial Times reported. More than 20 bondholders met a team of IMF officials to discuss the outlook for Argentina ahead of the country’s general election this Sunday.

At least two died and dozens were injured from looting and riots this weekend in Santiago and other major Chilean cities as protests against income equality intensified and spread across the country, Bloomberg News reported. The government has declared a state of emergency in the capital and four other regions in central Chile, giving it broader powers to enact security measures like curfews, for the first time since Augusto Pinochet was dictator. President Sebastian Pinera announced Saturday night that he would suspend the hike in subway fares that initially sparked the protests.

A bankruptcy court in Paraná state has scheduled an auction to sell two plants belonging to Brazilian soy processor Imcopa International SA on Dec. 4, the company said on Friday, Reuters reported. Imcopa, one of the largest non-genetically modified soy crushers in Brazil, said the sale of the plants in the towns of Araucária and Cambé was foreseen in its reorganization plan approved by creditors in 2017. In a statement, privately owned Imcopa said the ruling was handed down on Thursday by Judge Mariana Gusso. The company declined to comment further.

The International Monetary Fund will stand by Argentina as it works through its economic crisis, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday. She added that the Fund was waiting to see the future policy framework adopted by the Latin American country, which holds an election later this month in which a change of government is widely predicted, Reuters reported.

Two weeks of protests and clashes, in which seven people were killed and 2,500 injured or arrested in the centre of Quito, have forced Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno to rip up his economic reform plans, leaving him in a weaker position than ever before, the Financial Times reported. Faced with the demands of a $4.2bn IMF programme, the Ecuadorean leader needs to either cut government spending or raise revenue. His plan to abolish fuel subsidies, which triggered the mass protests, would have saved the state $1.3bn a year, or 1.2 per cent of gross domestic product.

Brazilian renewable energy firm Renova Energia SA has filed for bankruptcy protection, aiming to restructure a total debt of around 3.1 billion reais ($741.70 million), it said in a securities filing on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The bankruptcy filing comes two days after key shareholder Light SA sold its 17.17% stake in Renova to an investment fund for a symbolic value of 1 real, in a decision that followed failed talks to sell heavily indebted wind farm projects.