South America

Emerging market assets took a hit after several days of US rates volatility this week as market participants braced for further gyrations and issuers avoided raising dollar bonds. Market participants are praying that further central bank stimulus will pacify markets and believe that the asset class is far better prepared for higher rates than it was for the 2013 taper tantrum. Oliver West, Lewis McLellan and Mariam Meskin report.

Spreads on Petrobras’s bonds recovered most of their lost ground this week after a sharp sell-off followed Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro sacking the company’s chief executive on Monday. But while strong quarterly results released on Wednesday were a reminder of the state-owned oil and gas giant’s fundamental strength, Bolsonaro’s actions have led to questions around policy decisions in an economy with major fiscal issues.

Peru is set to test Latin America bond market resilience to both US rates volatility and domestic election uncertainty soon as it meets fixed income investors virtually this week ahead of a proposed euro and dollar new issue.

Petrobras bonds slumped on Monday after Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro nominated retired general and former defence minister Joaquim Silva de Luna to be the state-owned oil and gas giant’s new CEO. One analyst decried “corporate statism” as others saw the decision as a warning about the direction of Brazil’s fiscal policy.

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.

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.

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.

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.