Americas

Dutch asset manager NN Investment Partners will open a new office in Montevideo, Uruguay on February 25 to service Latin American and US offshore clients, the company said on Friday.

Pemex bond prices slid further on Friday after analysts said Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s measures to support the state oil giant would not be enough to prevent continued deterioration in its credit quality.

In this round up, US president Donald Trump hinted at a potential delay of the March 1 deadline for a trade deal with China, the National Development and Reform Commission required its local units to zoom in on the potential for bond defaults and Bank of China (BOC) said it will lend Rmb300b to the Tianjin government.

BTG Pactual’s new tier two bonds, the only new issue from Latin America this week, traded pretty much in line with reoffer in the days following pricing, suggesting leads had done a reasonable job of price discovery.

Brazilian lender BTG Pactual was the sole Latin American borrower to venture into dollar markets this week as some syndicate bankers began to worry that the region’s issuers are missing the best of conditions.

Chilean copper miner Codelco looks unlikely to be able to repurchase the $1.907bn of bonds that it was hoping to cancel via a tender offer after investors holding just over half of that amount agreed to sell their paper after the early-bird period expired.

One of the biggest snowstorms to hit Ottawa in years could not stop Export Development Canada printing its largest ever deal this week, alongside a record three year book for the European Investment Bank (EIB) and a very healthy Bank of England (BoE) dollar deal.

Credit Suisse’s fourth quarter results showed damage from the high yield and leveraged finance market’s tantrum in the last quarter of 2018. The bank was also hit by a Canada Goose block trade gone wrong.

The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and Agence Française de Développement (AFD) became the latest issuers to enjoy a strong euro market this week, and there is more supply to come.

The international capital market welcomed a new supranational borrower on Monday when Bolivia-based Fonplata issued a debut Sfr150m five year bond via Credit Suisse and UBS.

The US corporate new issuance calendar took a breather on Thursday after clocking up its busiest week of the year with $30bn of supply in just three days. Borrowers remained on the sidelines as investors digested the supply onslaught that brought bulging order books and tight pricing.

UBS is re-balancing its corporate finance business to end its reliance on its Financial Institutions Group with impressive results, writes David Rothnie.