Central America

The Mexican arm of Spanish lender Santander sold $1.3bn of new tier two bonds on Thursday, with the parent company taking 75% of the deal as it looked to extend the maturity of its tier two capital.

Honduran lender Banco Atlántida will meet bond investors ahead of a proposed green bond as Latin American primary markets slowly creak into life.

Soft demand and higher costs continue to hit Grupo Kaltex, leading Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the Mexican textiles company to B- last week and maintain the bonds on negative outlook.

Some emerging markets (EM) syndicate bankers in New York are daring to dream that there could be new issuance from Latin America next week, but several buy-side players are less than enthusiastic at the prospect of new deals.

With dollar markets requiring hefty concessions for Latin American issuers, the only new issue activity from the region since early July has arrived in the form of Santander Chile’s Swiss franc trade at the beginning of the month.

Mexico City on Wednesday became the largest city — and first city in Latin America — to sign the green bond pledge, a declaration seeking to encourage governments and companies to use green finance.

French bank Natixis has hired Benito Berber as chief economist for Latin America as it builds out its platform in the region.

Bonds from major Mexican issuers tightened on Monday after the USA and Mexico announced a preliminary bilateral trade to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

The drought in Latin American new issuance stretched to six weeks by Thursday, but DCM bankers are now more concerned by prospects for September after contagion from Turkey hit Lat Am assets this week.

Some Latin American bond bankers said that a soft day in the region on Wednesday was even more worrying than Monday’s havoc as spreads continued to widen despite Turkish assets rebounding somewhat.

Fallout from a diplomatic incident drove yields on Turkish sovereign paper to almost 20% this week. While yields have come off their highs, the picture remains bleak for the beleaguered nation.

Mexican telecommunications company América Móvil will redeem €900m of its euro hybrid bonds when they become callable on September 6, it has told investors.