Brazil's electricity watchdog Aneel expects a further delay in the construction of 6,000 kilometers of power lines licensed to Abengoa SA, raising concern over the reliability of the country's grid as a massive new dam comes online, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. Abengoa halted construction of the transmission lines in 2015 amid a financial crisis at its headquarters in Spain which was followed by a bankruptcy filing at its units operating in Brazil, Reuters reported.

Banks are raising the heat on Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht SA to put its house in order after months of treating the scandal-hit company with kid gloves because of fears its collapse could hurt their balance sheets, sources said.

One year ago, Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer — a veteran political operative — took the country’s helm after Dilma Rousseff's impeachment, promising to rein in public spending and return the economy to expansion. While he has taken steps to control the government’s outlays, growth remains elusive, Bloomberg News reported. Investors are pretty happy with his tenure, but Brazilians are somewhat less so, with opinion polls showing his approval rating hovering around the 10 percent mark. Still, no one’s complaining about the drop in inflation.

Risk perception for most of the world's countries have improved in the past year, according to a Standard Chartered analysis of credit default swaps (CDS), contrasting with deterioration in France, Italy, the United States and Germany, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. CDS are derivatives used by investors to hedge against a default or restructuring of debt. The higher the risk of default, the higher the CDS spread.

The Brazilian government plans to change the bankruptcy law to help indebted firms emerge faster from creditor protection, Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told a newspaper. The changes would reduce the average length of bankruptcy protection to two years, compared to between seven and eight years currently, he said in an interview published on Tuesday in the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper.

A former top official of Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA testified that he was asked in 2014 to bribe the then-head of Mexican state oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos, according to a document filed with Brazil’s Supreme Court as part of a broader corruption investigation, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Massive anti-government protests in Venezuela that have left about 30 people dead couldn’t stem the biggest rally in two years for the country’s bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Despite food and medicine shortages, the government has reiterated its willingness to stay current on debt, and state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA made good on a $2.2 billion bond payment last month. The implied probability of the country missing a payment in the next 12 months fell to 50 percent from 56 percent at the end of March, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg.

Brazilian phone company Oi SA said on Tuesday that Orascom TMT Holdings SAE, controlled by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, and a group of bondholder have given the carrier until June 1 to put together a restructuring plan to help it exit bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. This is the fourth extension granted Oi by Orascom, which offered in December an exchange of debt for shares and a capital injection of as much as $1.25 billion in the phone company. Oi filed for bankruptcy protection in June last year under the burden of debts totaling 65 billion reais ($20.6 billion).

The Brazilian government will introduce legislation granting it the power to intervene when telecom operators under bankruptcy protection, the head of telecoms regulator Anatel said on Thursday. Juarez Quadros said the decision was meant to avoid any judicial questioning of future interventions, but did not say when the government planned to submit the legislation, Reuters reported. Since March, the government has promised to enact a decree to allow authorities to intervene in debt-laden OI SA .

Venezuela was once among the most lucrative markets in Latin America for foreign businesses, a country oozing in oil and blessed with an emerging middle class hungry for everything modern, from new cars to snug-fitting disposable diapers. But the good times are long gone, and on Thursday, General Motors became the latest in a wave of international companies that have shut their doors voluntarily or under duress, the International New York Times reported. In G.M.’s case, the Venezuelan authorities seized the company’s local vehicle assembly plant.