Central America

Mexican government-owned development bank Nacional Financiera (Nafin) sold the first ever local currency green bond from Latin America on Wednesday in a deal that market participants said showed the direction the market needs to take to grow in the region.

The United States has unseated the United Kingdom from its long dominance of over-the-counter interest rate swaps (IRS) trading, according to an industry report this week.

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei) ventured into Taiwan’s Formosa bond market for the third consecutive year, raising Rmb700m ($105m) from a three year note.

Standard & Poor’s said on Tuesday that there was at least a one-in-three chance of Mexico receiving a downgrade to its BBB+ rating within the next two years, although bond markets showed no reaction to the announcement.

Mexican government-owned development bank Nacional Financiera (Nafin) will announce a green bond in Mexican pesos at the end of the month, which will aim to raise up to Mp2bn ($109m) to finance renewable energy projects.

trueEX, a New York based interest rate swap trading platform, has begun providing execution of Brazilian real swaps cleared at CME Group.

Financiera Independencia (Findep), the Mexican microfinance lender, has closed a tender offer for its 7.5% senior notes due 2019 after an extension to the early bird deadline did little to increase the uptake.

Mexico and Jamaica carried out triumphant, credit positive liability management exercises this week, as Latin American bankers saw little to suggest the overwhelming demand for yield helping to drive activity in the market will soften in the near term.

Latin America’s most frequent sovereign borrower scored two record yields on Monday as technical factors continue to govern investors' behaviour.

TriOptima and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have completed the first triReduce multilateral compression cycle for cleared Mexican peso interest rate swaps, in what they said was also the first compression in a cleared Latin American currency.

A welcome trio of non-Argentine corporate issuers provided variety to the Latin American new issue market this week, with all three achieving the rare distinction of being praised by DCM bankers both for their timing and for not pushing investors too hard on pricing.

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration could return to benchmark issuance in 2017, after this week selling $72m-equivalent of green paper to Japanese retail investors in its first ever SRI transaction.