Venezuela's foreign minister said on Tuesday that U.S. sanctions against the ailing oil nation are making foreign debt renegotiation more difficult and causing "panic" at global banks, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Venezuela is undergoing a major economic crisis, with millions suffering food and medicine shortages, and President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government is late in paying interest of some $1.9 billion on its debt. The U.S.

It’s been more than three months since the first of more than a dozen Venezuelan bonds was declared in default, and the arrears keep stacking up, Bloomberg News reported. Wall Street investors reluctant to give up hope they’ll eventually be paid are in limbo after the nation and its state oil company busted through grace periods on about $1.7 billion of debt payments, rating firms declared many securities in default and swaps that provide insurance against non-payment were triggered. For now, everyone is just waiting.

Emerging markets trade group EMTA has recommended that bonds issued by Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm PDVSA should be traded “flat”, or without accrued interest, the way bonds in default are typically traded. The move follows a similar advisory from EMTA on Venezuelan sovereign bonds last month and is likely to extinguish any lingering belief that Caracas might try and avoid a default by PDVSA -- the source of 90 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue -- to protect its key oil assets, Reuters reported.

A Rio de Janeiro judge decided on Wednesday that a shareholders meeting called by a major equity holder in debt-laden Brazilian telecoms carrier Oi SA will have no legal effect on the company’s in-court restructuring, Reuters reported. Responding to various petitions from Oi shareholders, Judge Ricardo Lafayette Campos also upheld a plan approved by bondholders in December and courts in January to take the company out of bankruptcy protection. “I maintain ... the decision that made the recovery plan official,” he wrote.

Banks and investors involved in the court reorganization of energy group Abengoa Bioenergia Brasil SA hope to get paid through a potential sale of the company’s two sugarcane mills, two sources close to the matter told Reuters. There are non-disclosure agreements signed with four potential bidders for the mills, said one of the sources, Reuters reported. Two of the suitors already operate in the sector while the other two are investment funds, the source said.

Seara Indústria e Comércio de Produtos Agropecuários, a Brazilian mid-sized grain trader that sought bankruptcy protection last year, on Monday filed its recovery plan in a local court, the company said on Tuesday. Seara Agro, based in the Paraná state and with no relations to a more well known poultry and pork processor also called Seara controlled by JBS SA, caused a management reshuffle at U.S. cooperative CHS Inc last year after defaulting on a $218 million debt with it, Reuters reported. The grain trader also has Bunge Ltd, Dutch bank Rabobank Groep and Credit Suisse among its creditors.

Venezuelan debt is kicking off 2018 on a tear. The nation’s bonds, which led global losses in 2017 after the government declared it needed to restructure its debt, have returned a world-leading 12 percent, Bloomberg News reported. That’s four times what investors got from second-place Tajikistan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded Brazil’s credit rating deeper into junk territory on Thursday, citing the government’s failure to pass key fiscal reforms, the Financial Times reported. The move by the rating agency is a slap in the face for the administration of President Michel Temer, which has been touting Brazil’s progress in recovering from its worst recession on record. The stock market has also been hitting new records.

Bonds investors are finally acting like they’ve lost hope that Venezuela will make any future debt payments, The Wall Street Journal reported. Traders debated for weeks about whether to continue pricing the oil-rich country’s sovereign debt with the assumption that it would keep making interest payments. But as the pile of unpaid coupons racked up, the association for emerging market debt traders this week threw in the towel and announced that from now on, the market should assume Venezuela isn’t likely to pay.

Fund managers holding Venezuela government bonds face a day of reckoning after months of waiting for more than half a billion dollars in late interest payments, Bloomberg News reported. Since November, investors following guidelines established by the Emerging Markets Traders Association have marked their Venezuela bond holdings to include all the interest they were owed, even though it hadn’t shown up yet. The trade group decided to scratch that rule Monday, and say that beginning today the nation’s debt will trade flat, or without accrued interest.