Brazil’s troubled telephone company Oi SA on Monday filed the largest bankruptcy protection request in the country’s history just days after debt restructuring talks with creditors collapsed, The Wall Street Journal reported. The filing of Oi and six subsidiaries lists 65.4 billion reais ($19.26 billion) in debt. In its filing, the company said it chose judicial reorganization to preserve the value of its holdings and to continue providing service to its customers.

Venezuela is “highly unlikely” to have enough hard currency to fully make its debt payments this year, although a default isn’t inevitable, according to a report from Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported. State-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which has large payments due this year, is likely to default before the sovereign, the credit ratings company said. That, in turn, could imperil government finances to the point it won’t be able to make payments either, according to the report.

An ambitious constitutional amendment to freeze budget spending would cut the uncertainty over public finances that is the root cause of Brazil’s deep recession, according to the country’s new finance minister, the Irish Times reported on a Financial Times story. “With this kind . . . of tough fiscal policy . . . everyone will be able to project the numbers,” Henrique Meirelles said.

Whether crisis-ridden Venezuela will default is a question increasingly on the minds of bond traders. It’s now also one that is getting front-page treatment from China, one of the Latin American country’s biggest financial backers, Bloomberg News reported. On June 11, the People’s Daily -- the mouthpiece paper of China’s Communist Party -- published an article in its overseas edition with the headline “Will Venezuela Default?” After considering its willingness and ability to pay, the author concludes the answer is no and chalks up all the talk about default to media speculation.

For Mauricio Macri, there may be a silver lining to the Panama Papers scandal that has dogged Argentina’s new president since he was accused of ties with offshore shell companies earlier this year, the Financial Times reported. Mr Macri is hoping that his plan for a massive tax amnesty will be helped by increasingly tough conditions globally for tax dodgers, as he attempts to restore normality to what is one of the world’s most financially volatile countries.

Pedro Parente is on a mission to restore financial health and public trust to Petrobras, the Brazilian state-controlled oil company that for the past two years has been at the center of the country’s biggest-ever corruption scandal, Bloomberg News reported. A veteran business leader, Parente said his immediate task as the new chief executive officer of the world’s most indebted crude producer is slashing leverage without turning to the government for a bailout. Then the company will be able to focus on accelerating deep-water projects through greater cooperation with its partners, he said.

Brazil’s worst recession in recent history continued into 2016, data showed Wednesday, as rising unemployment and deepening political turmoil dragged the once-dynamic economy into its fifth consecutive quarter of decline, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the first quarter of 2016 from the previous three months in seasonally adjusted terms, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said.

An appeals court ruling on whether a Liberian mortgage is valid for a Brazilian-owned oil production ship, due on Wednesday, could cast doubt on the future of secured lending for such vessels in the world's largest deepwater market. The court in São Paulo is due to decide on the appeal by Nordic Trustee ASA to overturn a February ruling that the $500 million mortgage registered in Liberia is invalid for the OSX3 floating production, storage and offloading vessel, or FPSO, owned by a subsidiary of OSX Brasil SA.

Argenova, the Argentinian subsidiary of troubled multinational Pescanova, is working with a legal team to prepare for filing for insolvency as soon as possible, reported Faro de Vigo. However, with all executive functions taken away from president and chairman Manuel Fernandez de Sousa, and the board of directors, it is unclear who will make the decision to enter proceedings. Deloitte, proposed by Spanish regulator CNMV as administrator to oversee the group's bankruptcy, will not take over until Thursday this week.

Brazilian authorities are expanding their sweeping investigation into corruption at Petróleo Brasileiro SA to include more of the state oil company’s suppliers, according to a person involved, a move likely to extend the probe into next year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investigators in the so-called Car Wash probe have until recently been focused mainly on a bribery-and-bid-rigging scheme centered on construction companies that work with Petrobras, as the state oil company is known.