Aircastle is set to repossess 10 jets from Avianca Brasil, the country’s No. 4 airline, after a bankruptcy hearing on Monday, a source familiar with the matter said, potentially disrupting flights for thousands of passengers, Reuters reported. The 10 Airbus A320 planes represent 20 percent of Avianca Brasil’s current fleet, according to data provided by Brazil’s aviation regulator, raising doubts about the carrier’s ability to fly its full flight schedule if the aircraft are seized. And it could lose more planes in the future.
Brazilian telecom group Oi SA has agreed to end all legal with a subsidiary of shareholder Pharol SGPS SA, the company said on Wednesday, paving the way for its long-awaited operating turnaround, Reuters reported. The agreement covers all litigation against the parties in Brazil, Portugal and other jurisdictions, Oi said in a securities filing.
On Thursday Nicolás Maduro will be sworn in for a second term as president after his first term saw an exodus of Venezuelans escaping economic meltdown. The UN says more than 3m people have fled Venezuela since 2014, around 10 per cent of the population, while the IMF expects prices will rise a staggering 10m per cent in 2019, the Financial Times reported.
Argentina bond investors couldn’t catch a break in 2018, with yields on the country’s debt soaring even after the government took out a record $56 billion credit line with the International Monetary Fund in an effort to bolster public finances, Bloomberg News reported. The average yield on sovereign notes from the country has almost doubled this year to 11 percent, and now tops the 10.9 percent rate on overseas securities from much smaller Ecuador, which has the dubious distinction of having the second-most defaults in the world since 1800.
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday suspended a presidential decree establishing rules for Petroleo Brasileiro SA to sell upstream assets, casting a pall over the state-controlled oil company’s ambitious divestiture program, Reuters reported. Justice Marco Aurélio Mello granted an injunction in a lawsuit brought by the leftist Workers Party to the Supreme Court, suspending a decree signed by President Michel Temer in April, the justice told Reuters.
Brazil’s fourth-largest airline, Avianca Brasil, has been in talks for a much-needed cash injection since before it filed for bankruptcy on Monday, German Efromovich, whose family controls the carrier, told Reuters. Efromovich, the controlling shareholder of better-known airline Avianca Holdings SA said in a phone interview on Thursday that he was negotiating with funds, which he declined to identify, Reuters reported. He also declined to elaborate on the value and whether the transaction would be debt or equity.