Latin America

Salta became the latest Argentine province to wrap up a debt restructuring on Monday after almost all its bondholders agreed to participate in a consent solicitation that will see the maturity on its July 2024s pushed out to December 2027.

Better than expected fiscal data from Mexico has led Bank of America analysts to conclude that the country’s fiscal metrics “could compare favourably to peers for longer” and upgrade their recommendation on the sovereign’s external debt from underweight to market weight.

As Uruguay looks to follow a recent surge of sustainability-themed bond issuance from Latin American borrowers with an ESG bond of its own, one of the options it is weighing up is a sustainability-linked bond — a format that has so far only been used by corporate borrowers.

Amid increasing concern that Argentina might delay a new IMF agreement until after mid-term elections in October, one of the creditor groups that negotiated last year’s sovereign debt restructuring issued a plea to the government to turn its economic policy around.

Mexican petrochemicals producer Alpek shrugged off a sharp sell-off in US Treasury yields earlier in the week to notch a highly oversubscribed 10 year bond in the only public benchmark new issue from Latin America this week.

Mexico petrochemical company Alpek could announce a new 10 year note as soon as Thursday, and investors expect the issuer to receive strong demand amid a quiet Latin America primary market.

Mexican petrochemicals producer Alpek, which lost one of its investment grade ratings for the first time last September, was holding calls with fixed income investors this week ahead of a proposed liability management exercise that would push its average debt maturity from 4.4 years to seven years.

Banco Santander Chile sold its first ESG-themed bond on Tuesday, raising $50m in a private placement with a Japanese investor to finance small and medium sized enterprises led by women.

Argentina’s sovereign bonds endured a rough ride in the past week as investors and analysts worry that the government may not be as keen as it appears to reach a new agreement with the IMF by May, its previously outlined deadline.

European asset manager Amundi is launching an open-ended fund for institutional and retail investors that will buy hard currency green bonds issued by emerging markets issuers.

Entre Ríos, the only Argentine province to have faced legal proceedings as a result of the past year’s wave of bond defaults, looks set to avoid a legal battle after reaching a restructuring agreement with the creditors that had pursued it in a US court.

Peruvian mining company Volcán said on Saturday that holders of around two thirds of its $535.264m 5.375% 2022 bond had participated in a tender offer for the issue. But the borrower will only accept 35.5% of the amount tendered, and will use the majority of the proceeds of its recent five year bond issue to pay back a bank loan also maturing next year.