Creditors who own bonds left over from Argentina’s default in 2001 are growing increasingly confident the government will negotiate once a clause that it says prevents a settlement expires next month, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The dollar-denominated notes rose as high as 120 cents on the dollar, according to prices compiled by Exotix USA Inc., which specializes in illiquid and distressed emerging-market debt. That’s the highest since July 30, when Argentina defaulted on securities issued in debt restructurings in 2005 and 2010.

Brazil’s next finance minister, to be appointed within weeks, must wrestle with a growing government problem: not enough money, The Wall Street Journal reported. Shoring up Brazil’s books is crucial for the nation to avoid a potential credit rating downgrade, which would increase its costs of borrowing. But there are short-term economic pitfalls as well as political challenges for President Dilma Rousseff , who faces a more conservative and divided Congress than she did in her first term. Among her first tasks is avoiding Brazil’s version of the fiscal cliff.

Argentina's debt default spread to its Par bonds on Friday after the country failed to complete an interest payment, raising the risk that creditors could demand that the country's cash-strapped government immediately repay all of its debt. Argentina deposited a $161 million payment with a newly appointed local trustee last month to try to circumvent U.S. court orders for it to settle with "holdout" investors. The holdouts are suing to get full repayment of bonds from a 2002 default before holders that accepted the terms of a debt restructuring get paid by the government.

Argentina’s central bank tapped a currency swap line with its Chinese counterpart for the first time Thursday, requesting the equivalent of about $814 million at a time when its hard currency reserves are under pressure, The Wall Street Journal reported. Argentina and China agreed to the 70 billion yuan currency swap during a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in July. Argentine officials say the agreement will make it easier for Chinese companies to invest in Argentina and strengthen the central bank’s depleted reserves.

A Brazilian court has approved a bankruptcy protection petition filed by MMX Sudeste Mineracao SA, an iron-ore mining company controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, the company said on Wednesday in a securities filing, Reuters reported. It was the third time in a year that a unit of the former billionaire's EBX industrial group has sought protection from creditors. The decision was taken by a court in Belo Horizonte in the Minas Gerais state. MMX Sudeste made the request after negotiations with creditors and efforts to seek new investors failed, MMX said in a filing on Oct. 15.

Grupo Oi SA, the Brazilian telecommunications company struggling with rising debt and shrinking market share, said the demise of an investment vehicle that owed the company's Portugal Telecom SGPS SA unit almost 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) is unlikely to impact operations, Reuters reported. In a filing with Brazil's securities watchdog CVM, Oi said its Oi, Portugal Telecom and TelPart units will not be affected by the collapse of Rioforte, as the vehicle is known.

In the famous Big Mac index of global currency values against the US dollar, Venezuela makes a surprise entrance as the third most expensive place in the world to eat a burger, the Financial Times reported. This unexpected finding can be explained by two factors: the array of fixed exchange rates set by a country that has to import almost everything apart from oil and the rampant inflation that has pushed up prices more than 60 per cent in 2014. For investors in the country’s debt, it is not good news.

Although Venezuela has the largest energy reserves in the world, its deteriorating economy has forced Nicolás Maduro, the president, to slash imports to cover foreign debt payments amid a severe hard currency crunch that has already produced shortages of almost everything, from toilet paper to medical supplies, the Financial Times reported. “It is hard to believe, but there are worse shortages in Venezuela than there are in Syria,” said Moisés Naím, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The main subsidiary of Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's iron ore mining company MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA filed a bankruptcy protection petition before a Brazilian court on Wednesday, Reuters reported. MMX Sudeste Mineracao SA, the unit that holds MMX's main mining assets, made the request after negotiations with creditors and efforts to seek new investors failed, MMX said in a filing. MMX Sudeste is the main operating unit of MMX and is developing iron ore mines in Minas Gerais state on its own and in partnership with Usiminas, one of the largest steelmakers in the Americas.

“We will not kick you when you are down, at least not for a couple of days”: that is the gist of a putative deal struck by 18 global banks this week, which agreed not to pull abruptly out of contracts with each other if one of them hits the buffers. As modest as that may sound, regulators see it as the foundation of a firewall to halt the spread of future financial crises, The Economist reported. The agreement concerns derivatives, contracts whose value “derives” from the performance of an underlying asset such as a share, currency or bond.