|
Latin American stocks posted robust gains, with Brazilian shares getting a boost from a local telecom giant's share restructuring plan and optimism about inflation and interest rates.
Meanwhile, Mexico's bolsa climbed on expectations for positive first-quarter earnings. Brazil's Bovespa Index rose 380.35 points, or 1.00%. Mexico's benchmark Bolsa Index gained 282.59 points, or 1.46%, while Argentina's Merval Index leapt 48.36 points, or 2.61%. Brazilian stocks gained ground, as investors were cheered by news that fixed line telecom titan Tele Norte Leste Participações (Telemar) plans to decentralize its share structure and migrate shares to Brazil's investor-friendly Novo Mercado. The company said that as part of the share restructuring, current holders of the controlling block of voting shares in the company will sell their shares to the market, in a move that will help ensure widespread ownership by the general public and effectively decentralize control of the company. All of Telemar's shares will be converted into common shares. Lending additional support to the market, economists and analysts polled in the Brazilian central bank's latest weekly market survey reduced their 2006 inflation forecasts for the third consecutive week, bolstering hopes that the bank will extend its run of interest-rate cuts at its meeting on Wednesday. Analysts reduced their forecast for year-end 2006 IPCA inflation to 4.43% from 4.47% last week. Meanwhile, they maintained their year-end 2006 forecast for the benchmark Selic interest rate at 14%. The bank is widely expected to lower rates by 75 basis points at its meeting Wednesday. In other news, steelmaker CSN was in focus after local news services reported that the company's shareholders will discuss the possible acquisition of can maker Prada at an April 28 meeting. Meanwhile, oil giant Petrobras said its petrochemicals unit, Petroquisa, and Citiene, a local textile company, will invest about US$ 490 million to build a new petrochemical factory in Pernambuco state in the Brazilian northeast. In broker action, a major firm raised its 12-month price target for the shares of paper and pulp producer Aracruz to US$ 69 from US$ 52.60, citing "an improved outlook for pulp prices." Elsewhere, Mexican shares jumped amid optimism about the first-quarter earnings season, which mostly takes place this week and next. Reporting Monday, April 17, Banamex, a unit of Citigroup, said its first-quarter net profit rose to US$ 444 million from US$ 373 million last year, helped by strong consumer loan growth. Revenues grew 19% to US$ 1.37 billion. On the political front, a poll published today by El Universal newspaper showed that the leading candidate in Mexico's presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party, narrowed his lead to 38% of preferences among probable voters in early April, down from 42% in March. Felipe Calderon of the ruling National Action Party rose to 34% from 32% in March, and Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party rose to 25% from 24%. Argentine issues rallied, following the rest of the region's move higher. In economic data, Argentine consumer confidence sank 9.75% to 54.02 in April from a record 59.9 the previous month in Torcuato Di Tella University's survey of consumers. Confidence had surged 6.5% in March. Thomson Financial - www.thomsonfinancial.com
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.