
By Jaime Trobo (*) - For some time now we have been arguing that Uruguay must strengthen its bonds and contacts with a neighboring territory, in the southern cone, part of our American continent, where families who arrived in our region during the first half of the XIX century live, and with whom those contacts, once very intense, have waned, particularly in the last decades.

While investors cheered progress on last week's arduous negotiations in New York between Argentine government officials and litigant investors, the administration of president Mauricio Macri still faces an uphill battle as it works to bring other holdouts on board.

The United States gave another sign of support for Argentina’s economic policies as US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew spoke on the phone with Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay, striking an optimistic tone regarding the settlement offer made to the holdout funds in New York.

Daniel A. Pollack, Special Master presiding over settlement negotiations between the Republic of Argentina and its “holdout” Bondholders issued the following statement today (Friday, Jan 5):

The latest report from the United States Labor Department for January showed job gains slowed more than expected as the boost to hiring from unseasonably mild weather faded last month. However unemployment dropped to 4.9% of the workforce, the lowest in almost eight years.

Argentina offered a $6.5 billion cash payment to creditors suing the country over defaulted bonds on Friday, seeking to end an exhausting 14-year legal battle, the sovereign debt trial of the century, that transformed the country into a financial markets pariah. Two out of six leading bondholders have already accepted the offer, the U.S. court-appointed mediator said, hailing the proposal by Argentina's new, business-friendly government as an historic breakthrough.

The Falkland Islands government would not permit anything less than full and proper abandonment of exploration wells drilled by any operator in the Falkland Islands, stated Director of Mineral Resources Stephen Luxton this week, following news of a contractual dispute between Premier Oil and Ocean Rig over the drilling rig Eirik Raude.

Government-owned agrochemical firm China National Chemical announced this week an all-cash proposal to buy Swiss rival Syngenta for $43 billion in a deal expected to improve China's food production.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Glauconitica zone of Chile's southernmost Magallanes region holds nearly 8.3 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable, unconventional tight gas, or nearly double Chile's production of that fossil fuel over the past 70 years.

Norway's Statoil giant announced on Tuesday an agreement with French Total to acquire a 15% working interest in an offshore exploration block in Uruguay's continental shelf. The announcement comes only weeks before Total is preparing to drill its first exploratory well in Uruguayan waters.