Repsol, the Spanish oil major, has finally disentangled itself from Argentina. It had held a majority stake in Argentina’s Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) and was caught out when the Argentine government renationalised YPF in May 2012, effectively expropriating most of the Spanish company’s shares. After a series of international lawsuits, the Buenos Aires government and Repsol finally agreed a US$5bn compensation package payable in Argentine government bonds. On 23 May Repsol said it had sold all the bonds and its remaining shares, netting a total of US$6.3bn. Company officials noted that Repsol’s share price had climbed to EUR20.65 on 26…

There has been a lot of bad news recently about Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil and gas giant. Production has been weak, first quarter profits were down, there have been massive cost overruns on refinery investments, an expensive accident in offshore operations, and a financially disastrous purchase of a refinery in the US. The financial mistakes have raised allegations of corruption. Is this a nightmare in the making, just as Brazil steps further into the global spotlight with the commencement of the FIFA World Cup and in the middle of a general election year? Or, as some contrarian investors argue, are…

Highlighted by President José ‘Pepe’ Mujíca’s visit to Washington for a meeting with his US counterpart Barack Obama on 12 May, many commentators have been intrigued by the apparently different treatment of tobacco and marijuana in the small South American country. As if to emphasize the contrast, a week earlier, when new regulations allowing the production and sale of marijuana came into force, the Montevideo senate approved a bill further tightening controls on the sale of tobacco. Uruguay’s experiment with legalising marijuana has been widely reported. Starting this year, it is becoming legal to grow, sell and consume the drug.…

Small enterprises are often believed to play a very positive role in developing (and developed) economies: they are associated with innovation, flexibility and the ability to seize new opportunities in a way that ponderous, process-bound large organisations cannot. So it is perhaps surprising to hear that one of the conclusions of a 2013 report by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), is that Latin America has too many small businesses. According to the CAF report, entitled Emprendimientos en América Latina: desde la subsistencia hacia la transformación productive (2013), about one third of Latin America’s employed labour force (28%) is…