South America

Argentina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling against it in a case over the nation’s defaulted debt, Bloomberg reported. The South American nation claims a federal appeals court in New York was wrong when it ruled in October that investors in restructured Argentine debt can’t be paid unless holders of the nation’s defaulted bonds, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and its NML Capital Ltd. unit, are also paid.

OSX Brasil SA, the shipbuilding company of billionaire Eike Batista, on Monday denied a report it failed to make payments on debt held by Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Reuters reported. The local Folha da S.Paulo newspaper reported on Sunday that Batista's OSX Brasil was struggling to avoid bankruptcy after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt held by Acciona. "The story on the supposed debt with supplier Acciona that OSX CN failed to honor is false," OSX said in a market filing with regulator CVM on Monday. Representatives of Acciona in Spain had no comment.

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista is struggling to avoid bankruptcy of its shipyard and ship leasing company OSX Brasil after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt owed to Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Folha de S.Paulo daily reported on Sunday. OSX Brazil, which recently fired 300 employees to cut costs, is now under pressure from banking creditors to pay off or renegotiate some 2 billion reais in short-term debt, the newspaper reported without revealing its source.

Edno Santana de Vasconcelos, a resident of Brasília, was delighted when he secured a new dwelling earlier this year under the government’s “my home, my life” housing programme for lower income earners. But if he thought the scheme, with its subsidised mortgage, was generous he was more impressed this week to learn of the government’s “my better home” plan, the Financial Times reported. This is a line of cheap credit entitling people in the housing scheme to buy up to R$5000 ($2,334)-worth of washing machines, fridges or televisions for their new digs.

Central bank forum the Bank for International Settlements laid out a blueprint on Sunday for how to recapitalise a major lender in the event of a failure, seeking to avoid the sort of chaotic ad hoc rescues seen since 2008's financial crash, Reuters reported. Authorities have been grappling since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers five years ago with the question of how banks regarded as systemically important - or too big to fail (TBTF) - can be recapitalised without causing panic and without needing taxpayer cash.

A surge in requests for bankruptcy protection among Brazilian small- and mid-sized corporate borrowers is setting off an alarm among private-sector banks, which could raise borrowing costs and restrict access to credit to fend off the practice, analysts at BTG Pactual Group said on Tuesday, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported.

When Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the economy was collapsing and a bloody popular revolt had helped topple two presidents in a week. Now, the country could default again, but it would be over a matter of principle rather than necessity, Reuters reported. After a decade of sleepy litigation, investors got a jolt late last year when U.S. courts ruled in favor of "holdout" creditors who had rejected Argentine debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010 and sued to be repaid in full on their defaulted bonds. A U.S.

Global youth unemployment is set to continue growing over the next five years, putting a generation at risk of lasting damage to their earnings potential and job prospects throughout their lives, the International Labour Organisation has warned, the Financial Times reported. The UN agency said in a report released on Wednesday that it expected the worldwide youth jobless rate to increase from 12.4 per cent last year to 12.8 per cent by 2018.

Brazilian regulators want to speed up a plan to pull power holding company Grupo Rede Energia SA out of bankruptcy protection in an effort to avert service disruptions. Administrators assigned to keep Rede Energia's companies running during the bankruptcy process are running out of funds, which could compromise basic upkeep and lead to spotty service, Edvaldo Santana, head of energy regulator Aneel said on Tuesday. The process should be concluded ahead of a court-mandated deadline in July, sources had told Reuters in late March.

The Brazilian government, concerned about systemic risk in the rapid growth of banking assets, will propose legislation to make shareholders, bondholders and depositors pay for rescuing troubled banks and shield taxpayers from the cost of bailouts, Reuters reported.