Brazilian companies are taking a page from their US counterparts when it comes to governance and corporate social responsibility. In a recent Latin American corporate governance survey by Latin Finance and consultancy Management & Excellence, Brazilian firms topped the rankings across different industries--not only aiming for compliance, but striving for excellence in corporate social responsibility, sustainability, board independence and other governance measures.

Companies throughout the region are showing increasing interest in building their good governance reputations in order to attract capital investment from Latin America, the US, and globally.

A number of Latin American companies have been eyeing the US for acquisitions--with some big deals already completed and numerous companies looking to make use of their big balance sheets to buy US assets.

With restructuring and consolidation still the name of the game for many US firms, this could be positive news for US companies looking for buyers of their non-core assets.

JPMorgan today came out with research predicting a wave of global rate hikes in the next three months. So far only five countries have started to raise rates: Australia, Norway, India, Israel and Malaysia. JPMorgan predicts that number to rise to 14 over the next trimester.

"For a broad range of emerging market and commodity-producing nations, momentum is shifting decisively toward normalizing policy," writes the bank in today's note. The two biggest countries likely to raise rates are Canada and Brazil; Canada due to the improving economic sentiment in the US and Brazil due to the massive capital inflows it is experiencing.

Even as private equity firms struggle to raise new capital , investors continue to be attracted to funds focused on emerging markets. But this time around, they are betting on more stable countries than before.

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, private equity investors were largely drawn to the Middle East and even Eastern Europe. But, as the world economy works to right itself, they are now reducing their risk and choosing more proven markets, such as China, India and Brazil, according to a survey by Coller Capital, a private equity firm focused on secondary investments.