Brazil's federal government and Rio de Janeiro state have agreed on a package of austerity measures that will partially plug the financially struggling state's anticipated $8 billion deficit. The federal government offered Thursday to defer the state's debt payments for up to three years, in exchange for spending cuts and tax increases, The New Zealand Herald reported on a Reuters story. Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told a news conference the measures would yield around $6 billion in total. They include nearly $3 billion in spending cuts.

Brazilian pulp and paper company Fibria dropped controversial language on a 10-year Green bond on Wednesday amid strong investor pushback, sources told IFR. Fibria was one of several companies this week to drop the aggressive terms, which make it easier for borrowers to breach covenants without offering investors compensation.

A thousand abandoned concrete huts dot a plain beneath a remote mountain range here in western Venezuela, surrounded by empty, rusting silos and irrigation canals covered with weeds. This is the Diluvio agro-industrial commune, built with $2 billion of Venezuelan capital by Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA, which last month admitted to giving out almost $800 million in bribes to secure contracts in 12 countries, including Venezuela.

A judge indicted ex-President Cristina Kirchner on corruption charges involving public works and ordered millions of dollars of her assets to be frozen, escalating the legal troubles facing the former Argentine leader, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investigative Judge Julián Ercolini approved trying Mrs. Kirchner, along with several former aides and a businessman, for alleged racketeering and administrative fraud in connection with road projects in her home Santa Cruz province.

Carrying trash bags and backpacks filled with cash, Venezuelans fretfully lined up on Friday outside banks across the country to exchange currency that President Nicolás Maduro said would soon be void. Mr. Maduro’s decision that all 100-bolívar notes must be exchanged has caused panic, partly because the deadline keeps shifting and many banks and businesses are already refusing to accept them. For many people without bank accounts, the bills, which have long been the country’s highest-denomination note, are their primary means of saving money.

A group led by creditors and Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris unveiled on Friday an alternative restructuring proposal for debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA that contemplates 37 billion reais ($11 billion) in investments over five years in exchange for a 95 percent stake, Reuters reported. The group of bondholders represented by Moelis & Co and Sawiris told Oi on Friday they would also raise $1.25 billion in new capital and take immediate control of the carrier through a debt-for-equity swap. Oi filed in June for Brazil's largest ever bankruptcy protection.

Ecovix Engevix Construções Oceánicas SA and five subsidiaries have filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal commercial court, succumbing to a debt burden of 8 billion reais ($2.4 billion) and a plunge in shipbuilding, Reuters reported. In a statement on Friday, Ecovix said Banco Brasil Plural SA and law firm Felsberg Advogados will advise it on bankruptcy protection proceedings, which will take place in a court based in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Cash at the shipbuilder is being depleted at this point, the statement said.

The Brazilian government is considering easing legislation overseeing the acquisition of companies in distress or under bankruptcy protection by making buyers less liable for the burden of past obligations, O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported on Thursday. According to Estado, which did not say how it obtained the information, Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles plans to propose the amendments to the country's bankruptcy law in a policymaking meeting later in the day.

Venezuelans desperately rushed to banks Tuesday to dump cash after the government announced it is eliminating the largest circulating bank note to combat contraband in a country whipsawed by the world’s deepest recession and highest inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the financial district of downtown Caracas, National Guard troops carrying assault rifles stood outside banks as crowds of people lined up to deposit stacks of 100-bolivar bills, which President Nicolás Maduro said Monday would become void on Wednesday night.

Brazil’s Senate on Tuesday approved a measure capping public spending, delivering a victory to embattled President Michel Temer, who is struggling to close a massive budget deficit and revive the nation’s moribund economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. In an unusually rapid session with little discussion, lawmakers voted 53 to 16 to approve a constitutional amendment limiting the nation’s annual spending growth to the previous year’s inflation rate.