Societe Mondiale, a shareholder in Brazilian telecoms company Oi SA affiliated with Brazilian investor Nelson Tanure, filed a complaint with the nation’s telecoms regulator on Friday seeking to limit the actions of a key bondholder, Reuters reported. In the complaint, seen by Reuters, Societe Mondiale asks the competition unit of telecoms regulator Anatel to prohibit the company from signing any contract or engaging in negotiations that “may give legal substance to a deal implying transfer of control to any fund” related to Aurelius Capital Management LP.
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A Brazilian bankruptcy judge overseeing Oi SA’s in-court debt restructuring has put newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Eurico Teles in charge of negotiating with creditors, the telecom operator said in a filing. The decision, disclosed late on Wednesday night, gives Teles powers to draft a debt restructuring plan and present it to the judge without board approval, a move that severely weakens the power of influential shareholder Nelson Tanure, Reuters reported. Preferred shares of Oi were down 1.3 percent at 3.88 reais ($1.19) in early trading.
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Back in May, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stirred up a public-relations nightmare when its asset-management arm bought almost $3 billion worth of distressed Venezuelan bonds for pennies on the dollar. They were labeled “hunger bonds,” a nod at the country’s deepening humanitarian crisis, and critics pilloried Goldman Sachs online. Now, to make matters worse for the bank, those bonds are in default, Bloomberg News reported.
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It has been called the Schrödinger’s cat of the debt world — the country that simultaneously both is and is not in default. This month, Venezuela announced it would restructure all its foreign debts, the Financial Times reported. Soon after, it began missing deadlines for bond payments and was declared to be in default by rating agencies and others. Nevertheless — apparently — it continues to make payments on its bonds.
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The chief executive of Oi SA has resigned, its largest shareholder said on Friday, as the Brazilian telecommunications firm enters a crucial phase in Latin America’s biggest-ever bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. A spokeswoman for Portugal’s Pharol SGPS SA, which owns about 27.5 percent of Oi’s voting shares and is part of a controlling shareholder bloc, said it had been informed of Marco Schroeder’s resignation. The move reflects deepening fissures between Oi’s management and board, run by shareholders aligned with distressed debt tycoon Nelson Tanure.
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Crystallex International Corp. and Venezuela agreed to settle a $1.2 billion dispute over the 2011 nationalization of a gold deposit in the South American nation, Bloomberg News reported. Ontario Superior Court Justice Glenn Hainey in Toronto approved the settlement on Friday after it was announced two days earlier through filings in Canada. Parts of the agreement remain sealed, including the amount to be paid.
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A Brazilian judge has decided to uphold bankruptcy protection for Seara Industria & Comércio de Produtos Agropecuários Ltda, a soy and corn trader whose largest creditor is U.S. agriculture cooperative CHS Inc, Seara said on Thursday, Reuters reported. In July, an appeals judge had granted a motion to halt the case while forensic accountants investigated creditors’ allegations that the company had falsified financial statements.
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The board of Brazilian telecoms company Oi SA is trying to assemble a coalition dependent on public sector creditors to pass its restructuring plan in the face of serious opposition from private bondholders, three sources with knowledge of the board’s strategy told Reuters.
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As Venezuela struggles to make bond payments on time, about a dozen institutions holding the country’s debt are in the early stages of organizing themselves and meeting with attorneys, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The group -- which isn’t yet an official committee -- includes mutual-fund managers Pacific Investment Management Co., T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Amundi Pioneer, Ashmore Group Plc, AllianceBernstein Holding LP, Fidelity Investments, BlackRock Inc. and Allianz SE, as well as the asset-management arms of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
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