Worst of Corruption Scandal Now Behind Brazil's Petrobras

摘要

The outlook for Brazil's state-controlled oil producer Petrobras, which since last year has been immersed in a huge corruption scandal involving overtoiling by contractors and illegal payments to politicians, may be brightening. On the evening of Apr. 22 the company finally published its audited financial statements for 2014, thus avoiding the technical default that would have happened had the firm not done so by month's end. Investors' immediate reaction to the numbers was positive, with the price of Petrobras' American Depositary Receipts rising more than 5% on Apr. 23. The trading volume of some 137 million shares was almost three times the previous day's level and the highest since Oct. 27, which was the day after Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff won reelection in a runoff vote.