Brazil posted a 2.35 billion dollars trade deficit in November, the country's worst monthly result in 20 years, and cementing its slide into the red for the year after a decade of surpluses.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has named business leader Armando Monteiro to head the industry and trade ministry in a new sign of more market-friendly policies as she tries to restore investor confidence and reignite economic growth.
US officials joined market analysts cutting Brazilian soybean production prospects thanks to a slow planting season, but maintained expectations of a, small, rise in exports to a record high.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff finally announced on Thursday the appointment of Joaquim Levy, as her next Finance minister who is also known as the 'scissors man', who pledged more realistic fiscal targets and promised more balanced economic growth.
Brazil's oil and gas giant Petrobras (and currently immersed in a major corruption scandal) has decided the appointment of a director of governance, risk management and compliance mainly to ensure risk mitigation and ensure the repeat of situations of fraud and corruption, according to a release from the corporation.
Brazil’s state-run oil firm Petrobras said on Monday it had received a subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission asking for documents relating to an investigation it is pursuing. The SEC investigation is the latest in a multi-layered probe into Petrobras which is spreading beyond Brazil’s borders.
Brazil's JBS, the world's biggest meat group, beefed up its growth in Australia with the 1.25bn dollars purchase of Primo Smallgoods Group. JBS said that through its JBS Australia business, it had paid Aus$1.45bn in cash for the supplier of the likes of ham and bacon to Oceania.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff already has the names for crucial posts in her new government, but they will not be announced until next Wednesday according to reports in Sao Paulo and Rio do Janeiro newspapers based on Planalto sources. But the names were sufficient to make the Sao Paulo stock exchange surge 5% on Friday.
The lawyer of the Brazilian lobbyist Fernando Baiano, who was finally arrested in an ongoing investigation into corruption at state oil company Petrobras, has said that “no public work is done in Brazil without a bribe” and that the people who deny allegation of corruption “ignore the country’s history.”
A former Brazilian Development minister and currently member of the board of BRF, one of the world's leading food corporations, Luiz Fernando Furlan said Brazil is far away from world trade agreements and urgently needs to review policies in this area, including participation in Mercosur.