Americas

Costa Rica’s finance ministry said on Monday that it planned to begin discussions over a new $1.75bn IMF programme in the second week of January. But though an agreement would likely drive a rally in the sovereign’s bonds, Fitch Ratings warned it would not remove debt sustainability pressures.

Banco de la República (BanRep), the central bank of Colombia, has elected a former board member as its next governor, in a move unlikely to signal any major changes in the bank’s policy.

Jose Andrés Olivares Canchari, director general of Peru’s public treasury, is to leave his role this week for personal reasons, GlobalCapital understands.

This week in Keeping Tabs: the former governor of the Bank of England on value and values, The New Republic on law and value, reminiscing about the last crisis, and a pub snack en vogue.

Nio has launched a US follow-on offering that could raise up to $2.71bn, becoming the third Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker to tap the equity market in less than two weeks.

With returns on developed market bonds being squeezed as never before, debt analysts are heralding emerging markets as the place for investors to be in 2021. Yet the faster the global economic recovery, the more vulnerable EM fixed income will be to what has often been its downfall: any signal of tighter global liquidity conditions, write Mariam Meskin and Oliver West.

As year-end approaches and investors look for a breather, Latin America’s regular issuers usually spend December preparing for the traditional January funding round. But two of the region’s most prolific borrowers could not resist the historically low funding costs on offer this week, tapping existing bonds to buy back shorter-dated paper.

CVS Health Corp jumped at the opportunity to conduct a liability management exercise this week, as US corporate bond issuance began to tail off amid signs of investor caution in the run-up to the year’s end.

China’s Xiaopeng Motors, an electric vehicle (EV) maker, leveraged on a big boost in interest in new energy stocks from investors to raise $2.16bn from a follow-on offering of its American Depositary Shares. Jonathan Breen reports.

Latin American power generation company EnfraGen debuted in the international bond markets on Wednesday, benefiting from the strong performance from the region’s last power sector issue to price inside where some investors were expecting — despite a leverage ratio of nine times.

UEP Penonomé, the company behind Panama’s first wind farm, turned to bond markets for the first time on Wednesday for a $262.664m senior secured amortising bond.

Colombia’s finance ministry said on Wednesday evening that it had taken the “first step to entering the bond market for sustainable development” after Congress approved the issue of thematic bonds.