Braskem SA said yesterday controlling shareholder Odebrecht Serviços e Participações SA has placed the entire stake it has in the firm as collateral for outstanding bank loans, in a sign of Odebrecht's challenging debt refinancing outlook, Reuters reported. No details on the accord between Odebrecht Serviços, a subsidiary of Grupo Odebrecht SA, and lenders were disclosed in a securities filing by Braskem. Odebrecht Serviços, a unit of Latin America's largest engineering group, has voting control of Braskem despite having a 38 percent stake in Latin America's biggest petrochemical firm.

Venezuela’s bonds are soaring on speculation the government may be looking to strike a deal to push back looming debt maturities, a move that would give the cash-strapped nation desperately needed breathing room, Bloomberg News reported today. State-owned oil producer Petroleos de Venezuela SA has seen its $3 billion of bonds due in April jump 5.3 cents this week to 69 cents on the dollar, the highest September 2014.

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.

The International Monetary Fund issued a report that consumer-price inflation in Venezuela is forecast to hit 480 percent this year and top 1,640 percent in 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported today. As Caracas extends its declared state of economic emergency, many economists say that the nation will soon have to ask the IMF for a bailout. It’s gotten so bad, the government this month handed over control of food stocks to the military, ceding even more power to the armed forces.

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.

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.

Carlyle Group LP, the world's No. 2 private-equity manager, is in talks to sell its stake in Brazilian lingerie maker Scalina SA, following a series of setbacks that led to a debt restructuring, three sources with direct knowledge of the situation said, Reuters reported.

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.

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.

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.