With Venezuela and its state-owned companies behind on $3.4 billion of bond payments, a group of creditors has joined together to consider their next steps and selected Millstein & Co. as financial adviser. The group will seek to evaluate the financial condition of Venezuela’s government and state oil producer Petroleos de Venezuela SA and “consider financing alternatives under an appropriate policy scenario,” according to a statement, which doesn’t detail which institutions are included in the committee or how much debt they hold, Bloomberg News reported.

If there is any smart money in Venezuela these days, it is probably in a $2.5bn, 8.5 per cent bond issued by PDVSA, the state oil company, due on October 27, 2020. Despite being declared in default, it trades around 85 cents on the dollar, suggesting investors believe they still have a good chance of getting paid, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Compare that with a $650m 8.5 per cent bond issued by Elecar, a state electric utility, that matured on Tuesday, April 10.

The Venezuelan debt crisis could be on the verge of a new milestone as a $650 million bond matures Tuesday with little hope it’ll get paid, Bloomberg News reported. The notes from the state-run electric utility were always considered among the country’s riskiest securities because the downsides to a default are relatively minor. They don’t contain any cross-default rules that would affect sovereign debt or notes from the state oil company, and the utility doesn’t have any overseas assets that investors could try to seize.

Brazilian authorities said on Tuesday they had filed lawsuits against 17 people and two companies over losses suffered when the Petrobras employee pension funds and the Caixa Economica Federal invested in a special fund without due diligence, Reuters reported. The lawsuit is seeking 219 million reais ($65.55 million) in compensation, which authorities said is three times the losses caused by the poor investments. Petros did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Caixa Economica’s pension fund Funcef declined to comment.

India’s Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd will try for a third time to sell sugar mills it owns in Brazil at an auction as part of a recovery plan in its in-court debt restructuring, according to court documents seen by Reuters. Renuka, which entered Brazil in 2010 and owns four sugar and ethanol plants in the country, presented a new plan to the court overseeing its bankruptcy protection case that proposed to sell the Revati or Madhu mills located in Sao Paulo state, or possibly both, Reuters reported.

The Argentine government rebuffed an investor proposal that it should request a flexible credit line from the International Monetary Fund to shore up the nation’s finances, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal was discussed with Finance Minister Luis Caputo and his team the week of March 4 at private meetings on the sidelines of a larger gathering of about 50 investors in New York, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the talks were private.

Venezuela needs urgent debt relief and would look to give bondholders small payments in the short-term while pushing back maturities in order to allow the country to return to growth, according to the economic adviser of opposition candidate Henri Falcon, Bloomberg News reported. “Venezuela’s debt is in default and needs to be restructured in the nation’s best interests to get relief in the short term,” Francisco Rodriguez said in an interview on Thursday.

The world’s poorest countries are increasing their borrowing at a worrying pace and face the mounting risk of debt crises, the IMF has warned. Since 2013, the median ratio of public debt to gross domestic product in low-income countries has risen 13 percentage points to hit 47 per cent in 2017, according to new research by the IMF. The research found that 40 per cent of low-income developing countries face “significant debt-related challenges”, up from 21 per cent just five years ago, the Financial Times reported.

A magistrate for Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice has issued an injunction that hands telecommunications firm Oi SA at least a temporary victory over shareholder Pharol SGPS SA in an ongoing legal dispute, the company said on Wednesday. In a securities filing, Oi said that magistrate Marco Buzzi had “provisionally” awarded jurisdiction in the dispute to a commercial court in Rio de Janeiro over an arbitration body that Pharol had appealed to, Reuters reported.

Brazilian telecoms company Oi SA’s board has approved the terms of a debt-for-equity swap endorsed by creditors, even as a shareholder said on Tuesday it had won a partial injunction against the plan. In a Tuesday securities filing, Oi said the board approved the issuance of up to 1,756,054,163 new shares, corresponding to a maximum 12.29 billion reais ($3.81 billion). Under the deal, unsecured bondholders will be able to participate in the capitalization of Oi by swapping a portion of their debt for shares in the company, as agreed in a restructuring plan creditors approved in December.