Brazil's President Michel Temer is increasingly likely to depend on lower interest rates and an unpopular agenda of legislative reforms to revive a moribund economy, analysts said, as a deep recession risks entering a third year. Temer's best chances to spark growth lie in quickly pushing through Congress an unpopular pension reform unveiled this month.... Continue Reading →

The Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL] and petrochemical company Braskem SA (BRKM5.SA) will pay 1.4 billion reais ($417.5 million) to the U.S. and Swiss governments as part of a settlement in a sweeping corruption case, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters Tuesday The deals, first reported by the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper,... Continue Reading →

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to formally approve investing in the 1.4-billion barrel Liza oil discovery off the coast of Guyana by the end of 2017. Exxon hired SBM Offshore NV to design a floating production and storage vessel that will handle crude pumped from the field 120 miles (193 kilometers) off Guyana’s coast, the Irving,... Continue Reading →

The Brazilian central bank will add excess reserves to its toolkit to control liquidity and increase the efficiency of monetary policy, central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn said on Tuesday. In a briefing, Goldfajn announced measures to reduce credit costs for companies and consumers in the medium- to long-term as part of the government's push to... Continue Reading →

  12/20/2016 The federal government will include in the next auction, ten exploratory areas with potential for pre-salt, six in Rio de Janeiro and four in Espírito Santo. If successful, they will be under the concession regime. "They are not in the pre-salt polygon, but they are adjacent areas, but who guarantees that the pre-salt... Continue Reading →

Former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will face a fifth corruption trial, a judge ruled on Monday, as charges pile up against the man seen as a front-runner to win the 2018 presidential election. Judge Sergio Moro, who has overseen the bulk of Brazil's biggest graft probe into a long-standing kickback scheme at... Continue Reading →

  The Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly (Alerj) extinguished a special tax regime for the oil sector, in the midst of a strong financial crisis, on the grounds that the exemptions prevented the state collection of about 3.5 billion reais only in 2015. The Legislative Decree, which extinguished the differentiated regime that reduced the collection... Continue Reading →