Americas

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.

Latin America DCM bankers are gearing up for a calmer period in primary bond markets as first quarter earnings blackout periods near, after two companies jumped on an improving tone at the end of last week to sell rare Friday deals.

Banco Santander Chile has promoted from within to replace its departing head of corporate and investment banking (CIB).

Chinese road freight company ForU Worldwide is planning a Nasdaq offering of American depositary shares (ADS). It is looking to raise at least $100m.

Artisan Acquisition Corp, a blank cheque company backed by Hong Kong tycoon Adrian Cheng, has tapped global investors for a $300m Nasdaq IPO.

Uruguay, considered the most promising credit story among Latin America's investment grade sovereigns, raised $1.74bn-equivalent in pesos and dollars on Thursday, becoming the first sovereign from the region to issue local currency abroad in 2021 — as it was in 2020.

Guarantor: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board

Amazon grabbed headlines by pouncing opportunistically into the market and pricing an $18.5bn bond this week that included a record tight spread over Treasuries on a sustainability-labelled two year note, but the bigger story was inflation fears skewing the curve steeper.

Investors in Latin America are growing increasingly concerned that social unrest in Colombia, where tax reform plans are in tatters and more than 40 people have been killed, is a sign of things to come, with sovereigns facing severe pressure as they attempt to improve credit profiles that have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet sovereign bond markets are seeing only modest, short-lived sell-offs, given the enormous liquidity still in bond markets.

In the film 'Annie Hall', Woody Allen recounts two diners’ experience at a restaurant. “One of them says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says: ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’”

The Province of Buenos Aires extended the participation of its restructuring offer for the 16th time this week, but bondholders denied the province's claim that they had requested the extension.

A rotation out of technology stocks and concerns about market capacity have taken some of the steam out of a booming convertible bond market.