A Rio judge ruled Wednesday that the local Olympic organizing committee could be bailed out with public funds, a setback to prosecutors who had sought transparency in the committee’s budget first, The Wall Street Journal reported. Federal Judge Guilherme Couto de Castro lifted an injunction that had been in place since Friday and upheld on Monday blocking the Rio 2016 committee from receiving taxpayer funds unless it opens its books.

Banks and bondholders accounting for more than half of Oi SA's debt of 65.4 billion reais ($20 billion) are considering proposing a 5-year grace period and lower borrowing costs to speed up the Brazilian phone carrier's in-court reorganization, a person with direct knowledge of the talks said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to reopen the border with Colombia grants his countrymen a lifeline of crossing into frontier towns to buy what they need. Five border crossings opened Saturday under a plan announced by the presidents of both countries to gradually normalize movement. Cars will be allowed to cross in a month. But for now, traffic is limited to pedestrians, meaning for many of 54,000 Venezuelans who crossed over, how much they take home depends not only on what they can afford, but also how much they can carry.

Sete Brasil Participações SA presented a draft reorganization plan on Friday that includes seeking up to $5 billion in funding and downsizing business, three months after the Brazilian rig leaser sought court protection against 18 billion reais ($5.7 billion) in looming debt payments. Rio de Janeiro-based Sete Brasil is asking creditors, which include some of the world's leading shipbuilders and Brazil's largest lenders, to endorse a plan to help build between eight and 12 rigs, down from an original target of 28, Chief Executive Officer Luiz Eduardo Carneiro said in an interview.

State development bank BNDES, Brazil's main source of long-term credit for companies, posted a net loss in the second quarter, reflecting the burden of soaring loan-loss provisions as corporate defaults and bankruptcies hit all-time highs. In a Friday statement, Rio de Janeiro-based BNDES said that it had lost a net 2.174 billion reais ($689 million) in the first six months, reversing profit of 3.515 billion reais a year earlier. The number implies a second-quarter shortfall of 3.772 billion reais, according to Thomson Reuters calculations.

With Venezuela's economy veering into depression and Venezuelans scrambling to find basic goods, the government's decision to keep servicing the country’s $68bn in external bonds has been called everything from “crazy” to “a crime against humanity.” Putting bondholders above Venezuelans, these critics argue, is just morally wrong, Bloomberg News reported. But such charged rhetoric is no substitute for a sober analysis of Venezuela's debt predicament. Seen in that light, the wisdom of defaulting is less clear cut.

Oi SA is expected to burn less cash this quarter thanks to a June petition to win court protection from creditors, which is temporarily sparing Brazil's largest fixed-line phone carrier from paying debts, executives said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder told analysts on a conference call that planned changes in industry rules under discussion in Congress could help improve the outlook for Oi's operations. The company released weak quarterly results earlier on Thursday.

Grupo Bom Jesus, a Brazilian grain producer that filed for bankruptcy protection in May, has offered creditors stakes in a farm that could be later sold, in an effort to restructure 2.6 billion reais ($826 million) in debt, Reuters reported. According to documents that Bom Jesus filed in a court in the midwestern town of Rondonópolis, one part of the plan calls for an auction of farms and a grains trading subsidiary to raise cash. The company plans to continue operations while negotiating the debt restructuring.

Phone carrier Oi SA, which filed in June for Brazil's largest ever in-court reorganization, will present a plan to overhaul business and repay creditors later this month or by early September, Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder said on Wednesday. Schroeder told reporters in Rio de Janeiro, where Brazil's largest fixed-line phone operator is based, that suppliers and creditors will be offered terms of the business reorganization plan, which involves a debt-for-equity swap. He declined to elaborate.

Société Mondiale, a minority shareholder of Brazilian telephone company Oi SA, said on Monday it would formally call a shareholders' meeting next month to discuss changes to the company's board of directors, according to a statement sent to Reuters. The activist investor, which began to acquire Oi stock around the time of the company's bankruptcy filing on June 20, is proposing the replacement of six members of Oi's board, including five appointed by Oi's majority owner Pharol SGPS SA. The meeting should take place on Sept. 8, Société Mondiale said in the statement.