Grupo BTG Pactual, the Brazilian lender that slashed its workforce in 2016 and sold off assets to survive a liquidity crisis, is investing in Chile with plans to start lending, Bloomberg News reported. Rodrigo Oyarzo joined BTG to head the new credit business, according to Juan Guillermo Aguero, BTG’s chief executive officer for Chile. The idea is to use the Sao Paulo-based company’s banking license in Chile, obtained in 2014, to provide more “strategic” loans to clients tied to mergers and capital-markets transactions, Aguero said.

For a quarter century, one man ruled the Rio Parana, the mighty Mississippi of Argentina. His name is Omar Suarez. Along the Parana, the nation’s pipeline for key exports including soybeans, corn and wheat, he is better known as El Caballo: a hard-charging horse. Little moved down the river unless Suarez, a union boss, received tribute, authorities say. For crews and companies alike, El Caballo epitomized the culture of corruption that has held back Argentina’s economy for decades, Bloomberg News reported. Today, the story of El Caballo is, in a way, playing out across the country.

PDG Realty SA, the Brazilian homebuilder struggling with a cash crunch, is considering surrendering buildings and land given as collateral to creditors ahead of a potential in-court reorganization, two people directly involved in the plan said. São Paulo-based PDG hired restructuring advisory firm RK Partners in November to come up with a rescue plan, Reuters reported. Terms of the plan contemplate giving creditors control of some assets guaranteeing debt issued by about 700 special purpose vehicles created to fund projects, the people said.

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri said on Thursday he would annul an agreement his government reached to resolve a 15-year-old debt the country's postal service incurred when it was owned by Macri's father, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Macri spoke after a federal prosecutor asked a judge to open an investigation into him and Communications Minister Oscar Aguad earlier this week.

Changes in Brazil's telecom law currently under debate in the Senate are not being taken into account by debt-laden carrier Oi SA as it devises its in-court reorganization plan, Oi Chief Executive Marcos Schroeder said on Tuesday. Speaking at an industry event in Brasília, Schroeder said the imminent reforms will have no economic effect on the company's reorganization in bankruptcy court, Reuters reported. The bill had been scheduled to become law last December but was held up in the Senate after opposition legislators filed a motion to submit it to a vote by the full house.

A prosecutor asked to investigate Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Tuesday over a deal to resolve debt the country's postal service incurred with the government when it was owned by Macri's father, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A judge will decide whether or not to open an investigation, which could hurt center-right Macri's party in congressional elections later this year. Earlier on Tuesday, Cabinet Chief Marcos Peña asked for an independent audit of the deal to resolve the debt and denied any wrongdoing by Macri's government.

Arturo Méndez heaved a sigh of relief after slapping about $300,000 in hundred dollar bills on the table to pay for a house. Carrying all that cash around the streets of Buenos Aires was now someone else’s problem. “Why couldn’t I have just got a mortgage like in any normal country?” asks Mr Méndez rhetorically — well aware that affordable mortgages scarcely exist in Argentina thanks to its chronically volatile economy. As a result, most are obliged to pay for their homes upfront, and often in dollars because of the historic instability of the peso, the Financial Times reported.

The recent bump in oil prices isn’t enough to help Petroleos de Venezuela SA as it faces its fourth consecutive year of declining production, Bloomberg News reported. The company’s crude output is expected to fall this year as it failed to raise cash for investments and after Venezuela agreed to cut 95,000 barrels a day for six months as part of a deal struck by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other non-members to lift oil prices, analysts say.

Traders reduced their bets on a default of Venezuela’s dollar debt over the next year amid a thin repayment schedule in the first quarter, Bloomberg News reported. The implied probability of nonpayment over the next 12 months plunged to 44 percent in January from 59 percent at the end of December, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the first time the risk of default has been below 50 percent since September. The longer-term outlook is still a little murky, with the odds of a credit event over the next five years at 89 percent.

Brazil plans to overhaul its bankruptcy law to help troubled companies survive a two-year recession that has led a record number of them to suspend debt payments, a senior member of the government's economic team said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. President Michel Temer also plans to announce new measures next week to increase productivity and bolster the construction sector, said the official, who requested anonymity to speak freely.