The Inhauma shipyard in Brazil is the latest to succumb to a crisis that has wiped out nearly half of the country’s naval industry jobs in the past two years, leaving companies bankrupt and creditors unpaid, Bloomberg News reported today. State-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which had agreed to pay more to have platforms built at home to help jump-start the naval industry, is now sending work back to Asia, underscoring the vulnerabilities of an industry that basically relies on a single client.
Read more
Peru defeated an arbitration case brought by Renco Group Inc., claiming that the government had overstepped in authority by ordering its affiliate, Doe Run Peru, to clean up pollution linked to its lead and zinc smelting operations in the mountain town of La Oroya and forcing it into bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported today. The arbitration panel issued a partial award for Peru on Friday, the Ministry of Economy and Finance said Monday in a statement. Renco, owned by U.S. billionaire Ira Rennert, had sought $800 million in compensation.
Read more
Oi SA is sticking to its year-end goals of tripling subscribers who use multiple services and boosting investments by 25 percent even as the phone carrier works through Brazil’s biggest-ever bankruptcy, Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder said, Bloomberg News reported. The company is current in payments to suppliers and aims to continue on that front to guarantee service to customers during the bankruptcy process, Schroeder said in his first-sit down interview since taking the helm of the Rio de Janeiro-based operator a month ago.
Read more
Several of Pacific Andes' major lenders believe that the fishing conglomerate is improperly using US and Peruvian bankruptcy laws to "derail" a planned sale of its Peruvian assets, Undercurrent News reported. In court filings on July 8, several creditor banks of the 16 Pacific Andes entities that declared bankruptcy in the US on June 30 questioned directors' motivations to have three Peruvian subsidiaries of the group file for bankruptcy under that country's laws rather than in the US.
Read more
A minority investor in Oi SA, Brazil's largest fixed-line phone carrier, has called for the replacement of most of its board after the company filed for the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. Nelson Tanure, a Brazilian investor with a contentious track record, and partners have been buying up shares through a fund controlled by Bridge Administradora de Recursos Ltda, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Read more
Brazil's Óleo e Gás Participações SA, which has been under bankruptcy protection for nearly three years, said on Monday it has restarted output from its Tubarão Martelo offshore oil field near Rio de Janeiro after a four-month outage, Reuters reported. The restart came after Óleo e Gás, formerly known as OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações SA, received permission from Brazil's oil regulator ANP. Output had been shut since March 6, when the field produced 6,222 barrels of oil, according to the Óleo e Gás website.
Read more
Oi SA, Brazil's largest fixed-line telephone carrier, plans to start meetings with bondholders and banks next week as part of the country's biggest-ever bankruptcy protection process, Chief Executive Marco Schroeder said on Thursday, Reuters reported. To restructure its 64.5 billion reais ($20 billion) of bonds, bank debt and other liabilities, Oi will propose a mix of cuts in the nominal debt value, extension of maturities and conversion of debt to equity, he said in a phone interview. Schroeder did not elaborate on the terms to be proposed.
Read more
Brazil’s unemployment rate increased between March and May, while wages continued to decline, as Latin America’s largest economy faces a deep and prolonged recession, the Financial Times reported. Joblessness rose to 11.2% from 10.2% in the previous three-month period and 8.1% compared with a year earlier, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said Wednesday. Average monthly wages fell to 1,982 Brazilian reais ($582), adjusted for inflation, from 2,037 reais in the year-earlier period. The drop in jobs and wages comes as the country’s recession lingers.
Read more
Brazil's biggest bankruptcy filing ever is sending shockwaves far beyond the recession-hit country's borders as operator Oi SA seeks creditor protection from global telecoms suppliers and export banks around the world. Oi is seeking protection on over 500 million reais ($150 million) of accounts payable to international providers from Nokia Corp and Ericsson to IBM Corp and Alcatel-Lucent SA, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.
Read more