Latin America

Chilean government-owned copper miner Codelco said on Wednesday that it had sought to increase its cash position in the face of market uncertainty after wrapping a well oversubscribed return to bond markets.

Central American development bank Cabei is set to price its first 144A bond in nearly eight years on Wednesday after setting initial price thoughts.

With Covid-19 measures expected to add $4bn to Chile’s 2020 debt issuance, the sovereign is still to define the source of $4.5bn of funding for this year, according to the country’s head of international finance.

When Ecopetrol, which has been talking about bringing a bond for an absolute age, chose to do so last Friday after an oil price crash and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, it took the market aback. Fridays after all, are not typically when any self-respecting Latin American bond issuer comes to the market. But there is nothing typical about Lat Am primary markets these days.

Bondholders and analysts said that the Province of Buenos Aires had offered slightly better terms than the Argentine sovereign with its distressed debt exchange, but the offer, for $7.148bn of debt, is still likely too aggressive to gain traction with investors.

After releasing first quarter results that one credit analyst said showed “limited to no impact” from the coronavirus pandemic, Mexican payroll lender Crédito Real said on Monday that it had established a $1.5bn MTN programme that would give it “access to a wide array of debt securities in various international markets, currencies and maturities”.

Debt capital markets bankers had been hoping for at least two years that Colombian oil company Ecopetrol could be persuaded to issue a bond. When the government-owned borrower finally opted to tap bond markets last week for the first time since 2016, it caught the eye by doing so with oil prices at historic lows, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and, unusually for a Lat Am issuer, on a Friday.

International capital markets are facing a reprise of one of their most eerily familiar tales in the next month: the will-they-won’t-they tension of the run-up to an Argentina default, writes Oliver West.

Paraguay continued the relative rush of Latin American issuance on Thursday with a heavily demanded $1bn 11 year bond becoming the second high yield sovereign from Latin America in two days to tap bond markets to fund Covid-19 mitigation.

Mexico proved its capital market prowess with a highly oversubscribed $6bn bond this week, despite facing a wave of downgrades, concerns about the contingent liability represented by Pemex, and investor fears that the government is reacting too slowly to the Covid-19 pandemic.

New ECM head at UniCredit — NIB treasurer heads to SEB — Mills takes up newly created position at UBS

BNP Paribas has hired from Standard Chartered to bolster its Latin American debt capital markets team, GlobalCapital understands.