South America

Mining company Gran Colombia Gold Corp sold a senior unsecured $300m five year note on Wednesday, with bankers saying that the company had offered a pricing pick-up that could be attributed to the use of proceeds — to fund a new project in Guyana.

Power company Genneia has become the latest Argentine company to look to refinance bonds with an exchange considered distressed by rating agencies, as capital controls in the country limit corporate issuers’ access to hard currency. Unusually, the distressed exchange will result in the issuance of green bonds.

Andrés Pérez, who has led Chile through two consecutive record breaking years of international bond issuance, has left his position as head of international finance at the Latin American sovereign to become chief economist at Itaú Chile.

As sustainability-linked bond issuance gains momentum in emerging markets, questions are being asked about the product and its potential for innovation. The next iteration could see a feature already accepted in the loan market but not yet in bonds: a margin step-down.

Export Development Canada (EDC) sold the first offshore Chilean peso bond of the year as it dropped into the currency in search of short dated borrowing earlier this week.

Oi, the Brazilian telecom company, re-entered international debt markets this week to raise almost $1bn of short-dated paper.

Peru-headquartered San Miguel Industrias, known as SMI Group, which produces plastic packaging across Latin America, sold a sustainability-linked bond on Monday. The trade is the latest in a long string of Latin American issuers embracing the innovative format.

The Province of Buenos Aires reached a debt restructuring agreement with some but not all of its bondholders last week, leaving observers pondering what was left to resolve a stalemate that has already lasted 15 months.

A group of bondholders seeking to block a consent solicitation from Argentine utility Edenor could grow in number amid the lack of engagement between the company and its creditors, sources close to the situation told GlobalCapital.

Having sold €1.75bn ($2.1bn) of social bonds in euros on Wednesday, Chile returned to the dollar market for the fourth time this year on Thursday to print $3.75bn of social bonds across three tranches — the week after it had increased its 2021 funding needs by $8bn.

Long dated issuance returned to EM primary bond markets in force this week as DCM bankers said issuers were seeing the latest fall in US Treasury yields as a sign that they should accelerate funding plans. Although several investors remain cautious on the prospects for rates markets, the weight of cash to be put to work is set to keep funding conditions attractive for EM borrowers, writes Mariam Meskin and Oliver West.

Chile began chipping away on Wednesday at the bumper funding needs it announced last week, raising €1.75bn ($2.1bn) in social bonds in the euro market as investors said the government, which still has the lowest debt to GDP ratio in Latin America, has space to print more.