Latin America

As the highest yielding sovereigns in Latin America — excluding those explicitly on the path to restructuring — bonds from El Salvador and Costa Rica have finally caught a strong bid. But fiscal fundamentals are deteriorating sharply.

The US Federal Reserve’s whatever-it-takes approach to stabilising markets has had an unintended victim: serious discussions about debt relief in the emerging markets.

A group of institutional investors owning bonds issued by the Argentine Province of Córdoba has hired BroadSpan Capital and Mens Sana Advisors as financial advisors as the province works on a restructuring of its $1.685bn of international bonds.

Peru’s largest financial group Credicorp tapped international bond markets for $500m on Wednesday, maintaining a robust order book even as it tightened pricing by more than 50bp.

With bondholders mobilising ahead of a debt restructuring, Ecuador’s bonds have enjoyed a strong rally on the back of the borrower's perceived goodwill to the markets. But the government faces a delicate task in executing a restructuring.

For yield-hungry bond buyers, Central American sovereigns El Salvador and Costa Rica have proved irresistible in recent days. But as political infighting in both countries hampers fiscal consolidation efforts, fiscal fundamentals could cause creditors concern for years to come.

Bond buyers are showing interest in Peru’s nuevo sol denominated paper amid a sharp increase in EM risk appetite, according to the government’s public treasury director, even as Fitch downgraded the sovereign’s local currency debt rating last week.

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei) raised $530m-equivalent of debt in Taiwan and Switzerland this week to complete the bulk of its bond financing for the year, leaving the lender to focus on bilateral funding and further investor relations for the rest of the year.

While leading economists fret about a reckoning to come for emerging market debt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, for vast swathes of EM issuers bond market business is brisk. Despite dire data and forecasts, dollar funding costs for some sovereigns are nearing pre-crisis levels as investors grasp at any sort of yield. The rally may have further to run, write Ross Lancaster and Oliver West.

Central American Bank of Economic Integration (Cabei) turned to the Taiwanese market on Wednesday, raising $375m just weeks after a $750m bond sale in the US.

Brazil became the third Latin American issuer in three days to find bond buyers willing to place large orders even as pricing was pushed below their initial demands, as it raised $3.5bn of five and 10 year paper to provide arguably the starkest example yet that technicals are trumping fundamentals primary emerging market new issues.

Latin American bond bankers were hopeful that Cemex’s blowout bond issue on Tuesday could cajole other issuers into the market after the Mexican cement producer navigated volatile secondary market and a rating downgrade to notch a hefty order on the way to a $1bn seven-year bond.