Americas

Political volatility continues to take its toll on the credit ratings of Latin America’s strongest sovereigns, with Peru the latest to suffer a negative outlook as Moody’s predicted the next government will likely face a continuation of the political gridlock that has hampered economic activity over the last four years.

UnitedHealth Group finally sealed its $7bn merger and acquisition-related bond deal after a week-long delay, but it was stung by secondary market volatility as inflation fears remained top of investor minds.

Dollar corporate bond issuers had to pick their windows carefully this week, as inflation worries and hawkish minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting hit new issue spreads.

Official and multilateral lenders are taking a lenient stance on perennial defaulter Argentina but bond investors are increasingly sceptical whether the IMF programme that the sovereign says it wants will turn its fiscal position around. Markets are pricing in another default within a few years, despite a rebound in bonds this week, while eccentric policy decisions continue to frustrate bondholders.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s $1.25bn foray into the convertible bond market this week may be a sign of cryptos going mainstream. But the sight of such a borrower raising vanilla equity capital was not necessarily something to cheer about.

Angel Pond Holdings Corp, a special purpose acquisition company backed by Alibaba co-founder Simon Xie, has raised $250m from a New York Stock Exchange IPO.

Colombia’s credit rating was finally downgraded to sub-investment grade on Wednesday evening, as many had expected it to be. But it was Standard & Poor’s — not Fitch, as most had anticipated — that moved first.

Peruvian mining company Minsur, which will shortly begin operations at a copper project that almost triples its previous size, has signed a loan with two international banks to finance a buy-back of old bonds. The liability management exercise comes as the leading candidate in Peru’s presidential elections said he wanted to raise taxes and royalties on the mining sector, and nationalise the country’s wealth.

Shares in Coinbase plunged more than 10% at the open on Wednesday after the US cryptocurrency exchange operator sold $1.25bn of convertible bonds and suffered a serious outage of its platform that stopped many users from trading.

Argentine sovereign bonds rallied for a third consecutive day on Tuesday amid expectations that the Paris Club group of official creditors will show leniency over a looming $2.4bn payment. But some in the market saw more value in the country's provincial bonds, and the Province of Buenos Aires hinted after the close that it is edging closer to agreement with its bondholders after more than a year in default.

CDP Financial, one of Canada's largest public pension asset managers, joined three other public sector borrowers in the dollar market on Tuesday to sell its debut green bond.

After Chileans chose the delegates who will draft a new constitution, bond market participants appeared to be taken aback by the centre-right government’s poor performance. Chilean assets across the board slumped, with local rates hit harder than hard currency bonds.