Americas

After a booming 2017, with record deal volumes across securitized asset classes, S&P Global Ratings has predicted there will be $1tr of issuance across global ABS markets in 2018, driven by sustained economic expansion.

Canadian public sector issuers had a barnstorming year in the international debt markets in 2017, propelled by a strong economic performance by Canada and many of its provinces. But challenges loom — uncertainty over Canada’s trade relationship with the US, geopolitical instability and changing global monetary policy are just three of many concerns that borrowers, bankers and investors in Canada’s public sector bond markets will have to deal with this year. GlobalCapital met key market participants in Toronto in November to discuss the key issues.

Economic conditions are ripe for the mergers and acquisitions that drive capital markets. Into this mix comes a potential US tax reform more radical than any for decades. This is bound to tilt boardroom decisions about strategy — if nothing else, US CEOs could suddenly have more cash back at HQ than they know what to do with. Jon Hay and Sam Kerr report.

Non-US financial institutions have favoured going to the dollar market for unsecured offerings in the first two days of the year, with Crédit Agricole looking to raise tier two capital in the currency on Wednesday.

Emerging market bond fund managers say they are markedly more optimistic than 12 months ago when the "whole world was negative" after the start of Donald Trump’s US presidential term. And with plenty of sovereign trades rumoured for January, there is an abundance of investment opportunities.

After a record 2017, Latin America bond markets had a quiet start to 2018 on Tuesday but syndicate bankers covering the region said that they had a hefty pipeline and would start bringing deals as soon as possible.

For CEEMEA bonds, 2017 was a record breaking year and one which pushed the boundaries of product, tenor, and issuer. The $200bn of bonds raised in CEEMEA, and the $140bn raised in Latin America are the highest annual volumes on record. Investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for EM debt fuelled massive inflows into the asset class and kept the many idiosyncratic risk events – from Qatar’s regional isolation to deteriorating relations between Turkey and the US– contained. Picking out the deals of the year for 2017 was not easy for GlobalCapital’s editorial team, but after much deliberation the below were chosen.

BNP Paribas opened the new year’s unsecured market on Tuesday with a seven year senior non-preferred deal in dollars, undeterred by a less attractive cross currency basis swap.

Exchange-traded fund provider ALPS has joined CBOE Global Markets as a new issuer, bringing a new technology-focused ETF to the table last Friday.

Luis Caputo, Argentina’s finance minister, said that the sovereign will raise $30bn of new debt across domestic and external markets in 2018, as the government intends to continue reducing its financing from the central bank.

Brazilian low cost airline Gol is set to buy back more bonds after investors owning $21.191m of its existing 9.25% 2020s agreed to sell their notes as part of a tender offer launched on December 14.

A new dollar benchmark could be on the cards for multilateral lender Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei), the bank’s CFO told GlobalCapital on Wednesday, as the issuer looks to increase its appeal to traditional SSA investors by gaining double-A ratings.