Brazil Petrobras's US$ 4 Billion in Bonds Pay Up to 7%
Written by Newsroom
Sunday, 25 October 2009
State-controlled Brazilian oil and gas multinational Petrobras launched US$ 2.5 billion of 2020 bonds and US$ 1.5 billion of 2040 bonds, in what might be the largest ever sale of corporate debt by a Brazilian company.
The company is offering the 2020 bonds at a yield of 5.875% and the 2040 securities at a yield of 7%. The proceeds of the bond sale will be used to repay debt outstanding from a US$ 6.5 billion bridge loan that the corporation signed in January.
The oil giant tapped international credit markets for the third time this year as a recovery in Latin America's biggest economy boosts demand for the securities.
Petrobras sold US$ 1.25 billion of 10-year bonds in July in a re-opening of securities it first issued in February.
Petrobras Chief Executive Officer José Sérgio Gabrielli said last month proven oil reserves may more than double in two to three years to as much as 35 billion barrels.
Petrobras plans to invest about US$ 170 billion in the next five years to boost crude output by 53%. The company is spending billions to tap offshore oil deposits including the Tupi field, the largest discovery in the Americas since Mexico's Cantarell in 1976.
Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. arranged the bond sale, said a person familiar with the transaction.
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention.
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area.
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy.
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil.
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms.
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis.
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking.
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse.
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.