Colombian mortgage and commercial lending are unexpectedly resilient after the central bank’s steepest-ever series of interest rate rises, according to the head of the nation’s biggest bank, Bloomberg News reported. Bancolombia SA expects its lending to grow by 6% to 8% in nominal terms, from about 23% last year, Chief Executive Officer Juan Carlos Mora said. Some home buyers are taking into account the possibility of refinancing at lower rates in the future, he added.

Argentina's annual inflation rate topped 114% in May, but in a silver lining for the embattled South American country the monthly rise came in well below analyst forecasts and posted a surprise slowdown versus a peak the month before, Reuters reported. The monthly rise in the consumer price index (CPI) clocked in at 7.8%, the country's statistics agency said on Wednesday, well below analyst estimates of an 8.9% increase and under the 8.4% posted in April, the largest monthly rise in decades.

The previous management team at Brazilian retailer Americanas SA carried out fraudulent accounting practices and hid them from investors and the board of directors, according to a filing on Tuesday and comments from the current chief executive officer, Bloomberg News reported. The former executive team, led by then Chief Executive Officer Miguel Gutierrez, created false advertising contracts as a way to reduce costs on the balance sheet that ballooned to 21.7 billion reais ($4.5 billion) as of Sept.

Retail sales in Brazil rose for the second consecutive month in April driven by Easter sales, data from government statistics agency IBGE showed on Wednesday, but that was still not enough for them to meet market expectations, Reuters reported. Sales increased 0.1% in the month compared with March, IBGE said in a report, boosted by supermarket shopping but slightly below consensus of 0.3% from economists polled by Reuters, as growth lost steam from the previous month.

Brazilian airline Azul on Tuesday launched exchange offers aimed at pushing forward bonds originally set to mature in 2024 and 2026, the latest move in a broader restructuring plan it expects to remove an overhang on its stock, Reuters reported. The exchange offers total $1 billion and follow a deal with aircraft lessors to give them equity and tradeable debt in exchange for lower payments, a deal seen reducing lease payments by a total 5.4 billion reais ($1.11 billion) in the long term.

The main shareholders at embattled Brazilian retailer Americanas SA tentatively have agreed to retain their stake for about three years as part of a restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported. The precise lock-up period for the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Sicupira is still under discussion and creditors are requiring it to last into 2027 as a guarantee shareholders will keep helping to rescue the company, the people said, asking not to be named because the negotiations are not public. Lemann, Telles and Sicupira declined to comment.

Brazilian economists have reduced their long-term inflation expectations, putting an end to months of unchanged projections that the central bank had cited as a cause for concern, Reuters reported. According to the median forecast of a weekly central bank survey on Monday, 2025 inflation projections now stand at 3.9%, down from the previous estimate of 4.0% calculated since March 24. The expectation for 2026 has also decreased to 3.88% from the previous 4.0% forecast since March 17.

Argentina's monthly inflation rate likely sped up to 8.8% in May, according to analysts polled by Reuters, as prices in the South America country continue to soar despite a cooling trend in other countries around the region, Reuters reported. Argentina is battling soaring inflation likely to end the year near 150%, sapping people's spending power, pummeling the peso currency and pulling the rug out from under the ruling Peronist coalition ahead of October elections. That's one of the highest rates in the world and the fastest annual reading for the major grains exporter since 1991.

Peru's central bank expects inflation to converge to its target in 2024, not the end of this year as previously estimated, the bank's manager for economic studies Adrian Armas said on Friday, Reuters reported. The monetary authority's inflation target is between 1% and 3%. At a press conference, Armas attributed the revised forecast to inflationary pressures on food prices. Peru's annual inflation rate slowed to 7.89% in May.

Investment bankers are counting on massive auctions of energy transmission lines for a pickup in Brazil’s share sales, Bloomberg News reported. Projects demanding as much as 70 billion reais ($14 billion) in investments are expected to be auctioned through the end of 2024 and lure several publicly traded Brazilian firms. These companies, in turn, will likely need to fund their growth through local-debt issuances and share offerings, according to Felipe Thut, the head of Banco Bradesco SA’s investment-banking arm. “The utilities sector is this year’s hottest,” Thut said in an interview.