Latin America

The Republic of Panama is looking to deepen its local bond curve with its first Euroclearable domestic deal, with the small Central American country set to take an unusually prominent role in Latin American primary bond markets in the coming weeks.

International investors bought around half of Telefónica del Perú’s sol bond on Wednesday, as an attractive spread over the sovereign curve helped the telecoms company attract impressive size in a rare Latin American global local currency deal.

Consorcio Transmantaro, the Peruvian power transmission company, is preparing a $400m green bond, according to rating agencies, though Moody’s says it expects less than 95% of proceeds to be used for qualifying green uses.

Saudi Aramco’s jumbo M&A deal has a stranglehold on emerging markets debt investors’ attention and is dominating their schedules.

Telecoms company Cable & Wireless returned to bond markets on Tuesday, less than a week after it tapped its senior unsecured 2027 bonds, with a new senior secured bond with a similar maturity.

Global Bank, the fifth largest bank in Panama, is looking to bond markets for the first time for two years, to finance a tender offer for a $550m bond maturing in six months.

Mexico timed its return to the European bond market on Monday extremely well, said DCM bankers, with risk-hungry investors allowing the sovereign to notch a €9bn book on the way to a dual-tranche deal.

A strong aftermarket performance from Millicom’s Paraguayan subsidiary the day after pricing showed that Latin American bond markets were hungry for new supply, despite growing concerns over Brazil.

Telefónica Celular del Paraguay (TeleCel), the Paraguayan subsidiary of pan-EM telecoms group Millicom International Cellular, returned to bond markets for the first time in over six years on Thursday.

A bond market keen for duration welcomed pulp and paper producer Klabin’s dual-tranche offering this week, but a stormy atmosphere for Brazilian names put the new issue concession higher than recent deals as investors began to seriously doubt the country’s economic prospects.

The Peruvian subsidiary of Spanish group Telefónica will begin investor meetings on Thursday as it plans what would be the first ever global nuevo sol deal from a non-financial Peruvian corporate.

Fitch has slashed the rating of Mexican textiles company Kaltex by three notches to CC, warning that the issuer could soon look to restructure its $320m senior unsecured notes maturing in April 2022.