A group of investors holding more than $8 billion of bonds issued by Venezuela and its state-owned companies said that nation must treat its creditors equally, and it won’t support any debt restructuring that doesn’t, Bloomberg News reported.

A 200 basis-point increase in interest rates could spark a sharp rise in the proportion of emerging market corporate debt issues at risk of default, with Brazilian and Indian firms most vulnerable, a report from McKinsey Global Institute showed. Following a decade of loose monetary policy and historically low interest rates aimed at boosting economic growth after the 2008-9 financial crisis, global central banks including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are either raising interest rates or signalling an end to accommodative policies, Reuters reported.

A consortium led by top oil trader Vitol has entered exclusive talks to acquire stakes in Nigerian offshore fields that are held by Brazil’s Petrobras and its partners, industry sources said, Reuters reported. The assets are estimated to be worth up to $2.5 billion, the two banking sources and one industry source told Reuters. The buyers are talking to state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras, which is leading the sale, the sources added.

Argentina’s central bank is getting a new chief after the monetary authority failed to stop the peso’s plunge despite obtaining the biggest loan in the history of the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg News reported. Luis Caputo, previously the finance minister, will take over the post following Federico Sturzenegger’s surprise resignation. Investors need him to lay out a strategy to curb volatility in the currency, which has lost more than a quarter of its value since the end of April, including a selloff of more than 6 percent Thursday that left it at a record low.

Markets welcomed the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $50 billion rescue stabilization package last week, which seems to be stabilizing the peso. But the financial umbrella will be costly, a Bloomberg View reported. Rightly or wrongly, Argentines blame the IMF for precipitating their country's worst economic crisis. In the eyes of many voters, the mere association will damage President Mauricio Macri’s standing.

If you are going to go, go big, and get on with it. This advice applies widely, if not universally. Certainly it fits economic interventions. Argentina and the IMF, thankfully, have followed it. The IMF’s financing deal for Argentina, a country facing a falling currency and brutal inflation, was expected to take about six weeks to agree; it took a month, the Financial Times reported. Speculation pegged the value of the package at $30bn or so; it came in at $50bn. The market’s initial response to the surprise has been positive. Argentine bonds rallied on Friday morning.

The International Monetary Fund came to Argentina’s rescue on Thursday with a standby arrangement worth $50bn over three years, far more than envisaged by markets which are expected to welcome the move. The loan is subject to approval from the IMF board, the Financial Times reported. Its size surprised local media which had speculated would be closer to $30bn. “I thought it was going to be big but this far exceeds expectations.

When Pedro Parente quit last week as chief of executive of Brazil’s state-controlled Petrobras, Latin America’s largest oil company, he used his resignation to lament his countrymen’s apparent disdain for market dynamics, the Financial Times reported. Mr Parente, a champion of free-market policies, resigned after the Brazilian government gave in to truckers whose strike against an increase in fuel prices brought Brazil’s economy to its knees for 10 days.

Venezuela's central bank in April paid $172 million (£128.8 million) to U.S. bank Citigroup to recover part of the gold it had put up as guarantee in a swap operation, according to two sources familiar with the situation, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Sanctions levied by U.S. President Donald Trump last year bar U.S. banks from carrying out financing operations with Venezuela, meaning such swaps cannot be renewed. "Citibank got paid," said a local finance industry source familiar with the negotiation who asked not to be identified.

Three hedge funds that own defaulted Venezuelan bonds hired a Washington law firm to explore legal options for repayment, Bloomberg News reported. The group owns more than 15 percent of the $1.5 billion outstanding of Venezuela’s 2034 bonds, according to Mark Stancil, the attorney at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP who’s representing the investors. Stancil declined to name the companies. He helped represent hedge funds Aurelius Capital Management and Davidson Kempner Capital Management in their lawsuit against Argentina.