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By John Paul Rathbone and Jude Webber
It took three years, two months and one day for the billionth tweet to be fired off after Twitter began operations in 2009. Now 400m tweets are sent every day, and the figure is rising. But how to monetise that growth? Step forward Latin America, the first big region in the world targeted by Twitter when it decided to roll out its advertising platform last year. Continue reading »
Argentina rails: a sorry state of affairs
Argentina has been nationalising things again – this time, two rail cargo routes operated, since 1999, by a Brazilian company that is Latin America’s biggest independent logistics firm, América Latina Logística (ALL), and a tourist train, the Tren de la Costa. Continue reading »
[video] Don’t cry for growth, Argentina
Argentina was prosperous just 100 years ago but it now finds itself outside the club of rich nations. Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, talks to Long View columnist John Authers about whether other countries should fear an Argentine scenario.
Argentines seek financial refuge in art
Picasso famously had his blue period. Argentina has its blue dollar – as the black market exchange rate is known. And that’s good news for art collectors and visitors to the ArteBA art fair which kicks off this week.
Managing Argentina’s de facto multiple exchange rates is itself a fine art. But now art itself, among other things, has suddenly become cheap – provided people don’t use the official rate. Continue reading »
Uruguay: more Brazil, less Argentina
Uruguay’s leftist former guerrilla president, José Mujica, is renowned for telling it like it is. Which is why he doesn’t mince his words, in an interview with the Financial Times, highlighting why he is working on port and rail plans with one of his big neighbours, Brazil and, er, nothing with the other, Argentina. Continue reading »
Petrobras: saying Tchau to Argentina?
By David Gacs and Jude Webber
If rumours are true, it looks like Petrobras is about to get another top-up for its coffers.
Just two days after the Brazilian national oil company raised $11bn in the biggest emerging markets bond offering ever, market chatter is that Petrobras is poised to sell a stake in Petrobras Argentina, its Argentine subsidiary, for a princely sum of $900m. Continue reading »
Argentina: dollarise the economy!
Dollars in Latin America may be the currency that many people think in, but only Ecuador and Panama have them as legal tender. That said, in some countries, some items are priced, and can be paid for, in greenbacks and you can even draw them out of ATMs.
Dollars are an especially sensitive subject in Argentina, where foreign exchange controls are rigid and the black market rate has soared to twice the official rate.
So here’s one provocative idea: ditch the peso in Argentine entirely. Dollarise. Continue reading »
Argentina’s money-spinning investment: luxury motors
Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner may have promised that she wouldn’t devalue the peso, and announced a series of measures to bring dollars back into the system.
But the black market isn’t listening. A day after breaking the 10 pesos barrier, the so-called “blue” dollar continued its upward march, hitting a new record high of 10.50 pesos on Wednesday.
While this may agitate the Fernández de Kirchner government, it doesn’t make everyone unhappy. Imported luxury car dealers, for example. Continue reading »
Argentina: “Blue dollar” breaks 10 to 1 barrier
It’s been a tough 24 hours for the people who run the Argentine economy.
A day after President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner promised that there would be no devaluation of the peso under her administration, everything seemed to go sideways.
First, the black market dollar – known as the “blue” dollar – broke through the Messi barrier. Continue reading »
It’s a promise: no devaluation for Argentina, says Cristina Fernández
The words certainly sound familiar. But not in a good way.
In a nationally televised address on Monday evening, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner vowed not to devalue the peso while she was in office, because to do so would hurt the poor and the middle class. Continue reading »
Argentine bonds anyone? IMPSA wants investors to dig in
Argentine companies have had few funding avenues open lately. The cost of borrowing has soared, given the country’s ongoing legal battle with US funds seeing full repayment of defaulted bonds, and raising money domestically has become more difficult given that YPF, the nationalised oil company that has been issuing debt like hot cakes in recent months, is crowding out the home market.
So IMPSA, an Argentine wind farm operator, is bucking the trend. Continue reading »
Vale’s narrow escape from Argentina
When Dilma Rousseff emerged from a meeting with Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner last Thursday, saying that Vale would soon reach an agreement over its $6bn Rio Colorado potash project in the country, some feared the worst.
Local media took it as a sign that she wanted the Brazilian miner to stick by the cash-draining mine, which Vale ditched in March after rampant inflation and exchange rate controls doubled the project’s costs. Continue reading »
Argentina: get ready for the Messi dollar
Argentina has the official dollar, the blue dollar, the sky-blue dollar, the card dollar, and a host of other things in between. But with the unofficial dollar rate at a new high of 9.34 pesos, the Messi dollar could be next.
The gap between that black market rate – known as the “blue” dollar – and the official rate of 5.19 pesos is now above 80 per cent. Continue reading »
Argentina holdout saga: who has a dog in the fight?
Hold on – or should that be hold off, please – holdouts.
As the pari passu (equal footing) saga over Argentina’s defaulted debt and treatment of bondholders grinds on, a US appeals court has turned down a request from a group of disgruntled Italian creditors.
That had sparked a ping pong of filings – from Elliott, the fund leading the pari passu holdouts, and from Argentina itself. Continue reading »
“I want to go now”: Argentina’s inflation response
What’s that phrase? If you’re in a hole, stop digging?
Hernán Lorenzino, Argentina’s economy minister (left), abruptly terminated an interview with a Greek television journalist, Eleni Varvitsioti, after she pressed him on the tricksy issue of inflation in Argentina. Continue reading »
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