Brazil plans to sell billions of dollars worth of offshore oil rights to state-run oil company Petrobras, a move expected to saddle the company with new costs even as its debt soars and it struggles to meet existing production targets, Reuters reported. Shares of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is formally known, fell in Sao Paulo trading on Tuesday. Preferred shares, its most-traded class of stock, slipped 3.9 percent to a nearly three-week low.

Argentina asked a U.S. judge on Monday to issue a stay of his ruling against the country in its case against "holdout" creditors, as it sought to avoid a new default that would further punish an economy already slipping into recession, Reuters reported. The move is the latest twist in a 12-year-old battle with investors who refused to take part in bond restructurings after Argentina failed to pay about $100 billion of debt in 2002. Without a stay on a ruling by U.S.

Argentina has made a key concession in its long-running dispute with a group of so-called holdout creditors after agreeing to a meeting in New York next week to discuss debt repayments that could help the nation avert a looming default., the Financial Times reported. The holdouts, consistently described as “vultures” by government officials, are made up largely of a group of hedge funds that did not participate in the country’s two previous debt restructurings.

Argentina, looking to skirt a U.S. court ruling forcing it to pay holders of defaulted debt, will seek investor backing for a plan to move the rest of its international bonds into the local market, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said, Bloomberg News reported. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s administration has studied “extensively” the process to shift bondholders into the domestic market via a debt exchange and will meet with lawmakers to discuss the plans tomorrow, Kicillof told reporters today in Buenos Aires. At the same time, Argentina will send its lawyers to speak with U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Argentina a major setback in its long-running battle with a small group of determined creditors, heightening the risk the country will default for the second time in 13 years, The Wall Street Journal reported. The justices on Monday rejected Argentina's appeal of a lower-court ruling that said the country can't make bond payments until it compensates hedge funds that refused to accept restructured debt in the years following Argentina's 2001 default.

The cost of insuring against global bank defaults has plunged to its lowest level since the financial crisis in a sign that investors are willing to bet the industry has become safer, the Financial Times reported. Buyers of bank debt often purchase “credit default swaps,” a type of derivative that helps insure their investments against a default. The price they are paying for that protection is now the lowest since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. “We’ve gone back to pre-crisis levels,” said Brian Monteleone, analyst at Barclays.

A judge approved a restructuring plan for Oleo e Gas Participacoes SA, the oil company controlled by Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, according to a statement by the Rio de Janeiro court that heard the bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. The court's approval grants a quick and expected resolution to the largest bankruptcy in Latin America's history. Creditors of the company, formerly known as OGX Petroleo e Gas Participacoes SA, approved the plan on June 3. Holders of 90 percent of the Rio de Janeiro-based company's nearly 12 billion reais ($5.4 billion) in debt agreed to the plan.

Average daily oil output at bankrupt Brazilian oil company Oleo e Gas Participacoes SA fell 2.5 percent in May compared with April, according to data released by the company on Thursday, reducing the volume of oil available to pay for its restructuring, Reuters reported. Total output from the company's two producing offshore fields east of Rio de Janeiro was 424,464 barrels, or an average of 13,692 barrels a day (bpd). That compares with 421,287 barrels, or an average 14,043 bpd, in April.

Brazilian bank Banco Cruzeiro do Sul SA on Wednesday sought Chapter 15 relief in Miami, where a liquidator suspects some of its assets are located, after a Brazilian regulator took over its operations, Law360 reported. The bank’s liquidator and foreign representative, Eduardo Felix Bianchini, is asking a Florida bankruptcy judge to recognize the liquidation pending before the Central Bank of Brazil as the foreign main proceeding. The Central Bank seized Banco Cruzeiro’s and its affiliates’ assets in June 2012.

A majority of creditors of Brazil's Oleo e Gas Participacoes SA approved the terms of restructuring plan for the bankrupt oil and gas exploration and production company, its lawyers said Tuesday, Reuters reported. Oléo e Gás, formerly known as OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações SA, filed Latin America's largest-ever bankruptcy-protection petition in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 30. "The challenge now is for the company to operate as a going concern," said Sergio Bermudes, a partner at Sergio Bermudes Advogados, which is one of the law firms representing the company.