South America

President Cristina Kirchner, in a move that marks a watershed in expanding the state's grip on the economy, said she will send a bill to Congress to nationalize Argentina's largest oil-and-gas company, YPF SA, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move fired up a battle with the company's Spanish controlling shareholder and the Madrid government. Under the proposal, which declares the petroleum industry of "national public interest," Argentina's federal and provincial governments would take 51% of the company, now majority owned by Repsol YPF SA of Spain.

While not necessarily predicting a bust to Brazil’s boom, a budding group of turnaround professionals in the South American nation are getting ready for what they see as an inevitable shakeup, The Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported.

Rede Energia, the cash-strapped Brazilian power distribution company, will reach out to creditors to seek an out of court debt restructuring as it pledged to keep servicing its onerous foreign liabilities, Reuters reported. The company will contact holders of its U.S. dollar-denominated perpetual notes as "part of a potential debt restructuring program," according to a securities filing signed on Monday by Maurício Halewicz, the company's investors relations director.

China intends to extend renminbi loans to other Brics nations, in another step towards the internationalisation of its currency, the Financial Times reported. The China Development Bank will sign a memorandum of understanding in New Delhi with its Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts on March 29, say people familiar with their talks. Under the agreement CDB, which lends mainly in dollars overseas, will make renminbi loans available, while the other Brics nations’ development banks will also extend loans denominated in their respective currencies.

Banks began cutting access to credit to debt-laden Brazilian electricity distributor Celpa following news reports that its parent company, Grupo Rede Energia, was up for sale, the company's largest shareholder said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Celpa filed last week for bankruptcy protection in a Brazilian court, citing a "very difficult financial and economic situation." Celpa's access to credit has dropped dramatically since November, when news of Grupo Rede's sale first arose, Jorge Queiroz Jr., who owns 54 percent of Rede, told regulators at a hearing.

Celpa, an electricity distribution company owned by Brazil's Grupo Rede Energia , filed for bankruptcy protection under Brazilian law on Tuesday, according to a securities filing, Reuters reported. "In spite of the efforts by management with creditors and potential investors (in the company), the request for bankruptcy protection was inevitable as the financial and economic situation of Celia aggravated," the filing said, adding that the company aims to keep serving its customers. Read more.

The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that global growth prospects had dimmed as the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone entered a “perilous new phase,” the International Herald Tribune reported. Releasing quarterly updates of three reports on the outlooks for the economy, debt and global financial stability, the fund cut its estimates of global growth this year to 3.25 percent, from the 4 percent it forecast in September, on “sharply escalated” risks emanating from Europe.

The International Monetary Fund has asked its member countries for an extra $500bn in firepower to combat the world’s spreading fiscal emergencies, which it estimates will generate demand for bail-out loans totalling $1tn over the next two years, the Financial Times reported. The estimate was presented by Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, to the fund’s executive board this week, according to people familiar with the discussions, and would most likely be financed by voluntary ad hoc loans rather than mandatory contributions. The IMF currently has $387bn in available resources.

Argentine supermarket chain Eki is in talks to sell about 25 of its large format stores to China's Yonghui Superstores Co., according to a person familiar with the matter, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported. "They already export wine and other [Argentine] products to China and are interested in expanding outside of China," said an Eki executive, who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the talks.

The number of failed companies is expected to rise by 3 percent globally this year, led by Europe, under the weight of an economic slowdown and tighter monetary and budgetary policy, credit insurance company Euler Hermes said in a report, Reuters reported. Failures will likely increase by 12 percent in the euro zone, including a 19 percent rise among Mediterranean countries that have been "very weakened by the crisis", Euler Hermes Chief Economist Ludovic Subran said. Euler Hermes economists expect global gross domestic product growth to slow to 2.7 percent this year from 3 percent in 2011.