Latin America

Hidrovias do Brasil, the Brazilian waterway logistics provider, will begin meeting investors on Wednesday as it plans a debut international bond sale.

Brazilian logistics firm JSL returned to dollar markets on Monday to tap the 7.75% July 2024 notes it sold in its debut deal in July last year.

Two corporate issuers are making early moves into the capital markets this year without waiting for sovereign issuers to establish benchmarks, showing the strength of funding conditions in emerging market debt, said bankers.

After Latin American issuers burst into the market in the first week of the year for the first time ever, Brazilian meatpacker Marfrig became the fifth company from the region to announce a roadshow and keep up primary market momentum.

Below-freezing temperatures in New York that left several EM bond market participants working from home on Thursday could not stop Latin American borrowers from bringing early heat to 2018.

Two Brazilian companies could tap international bond markets as soon as next week after announcing fixed income investor meetings.

The head of Mexico’s public credit office told GlobalCapital that the Latin American sovereign had been particularly keen to set a strong precedent for the country’s issuers after it kicked off a potentially volatile year with a $3.2bn blowout dual-tranche.

A new dollar benchmark could be on the cards for multilateral lender Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei), the bank’s CFO told GlobalCapital, as the issuer looks to increase its appeal to traditional SSA investors by gaining double-A ratings.

Mexico returned to its habitual role of opening the Latin American bond markets for the year on Wednesday with a $2.6bn trade including a tap of its 2048s to make the most of an exceptionally flat curve.

Emerging market bond fund managers say they are markedly more optimistic than 12 months ago when the "whole world was negative" after the start of Donald Trump’s US presidential term. And with plenty of sovereign trades rumoured for January, there is an abundance of investment opportunities.

After a record 2017, Latin America bond markets had a quiet start to 2018 on Tuesday but syndicate bankers covering the region said that they had a hefty pipeline and would start bringing deals as soon as possible.

For CEEMEA bonds, 2017 was a record breaking year and one which pushed the boundaries of product, tenor, and issuer. The $200bn of bonds raised in CEEMEA, and the $140bn raised in Latin America are the highest annual volumes on record. Investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for EM debt fuelled massive inflows into the asset class and kept the many idiosyncratic risk events – from Qatar’s regional isolation to deteriorating relations between Turkey and the US– contained. Picking out the deals of the year for 2017 was not easy for GlobalCapital’s editorial team, but after much deliberation the below were chosen.