South America

Credivalores, a Colombian consumer and payroll lender, had to navigate a more cautious bond market on Monday to clinch a five year deal that landed exactly where fellow non-bank lender AlphaCredit had priced a trade last week.

A group of Province of Buenos Aires creditors immediately backed the issuer after it significantly sweetened the terms on offer to bondholders in an attempt to dodge a default that could be just two days away.

The Province of Buenos Aires has given itself an extra working day to track down bondholders and persuade them to accept a delay in an amortisation payment as it seeks to avoid a hard default on its debt.

Latin American bond markets reached record levels of January issuance this week as primary activity ticked over despite the scare about the coronavirus, which the World Health Organisation declared a global emergency on Thursday.

Buenos Aires Province has offered more incentives to bondholders to encourage them to accept a three-month delay of a small debt payment. The move makes the Argentine sovereign’s aim to restructure all its external debt by March 31 as ambitious.

Peruvian fresh food exporter Camposol tightened pricing on its new bond by well over 50bp from initial price thoughts on Tuesday as bankers said the price discovery exercise had exceeded expectations.

Colombian financial conglomerate Grupo Aval found idyllic conditions on its return to international bond markets on Tuesday after an eight absence, offering a minimal concession to existing notes issued by its largest subsidiary.

Bankers and investors say that the Province of Buenos Aires is facing difficulties in persuading 75% of bondholders to support a two month delay in debt payments, prompting the government to offer a sweetener in the shape of advance interest payments.

Three Latin American companies issued bonds on Thursday and three more are meeting investors, as borrowers of all shapes and sizes assess the appetite for their debt.

Investors saw Colombia’s decision to hit international bond markets on the day a national strike was planned as a statement of intent. But concerns over social unrest, or indeed a challenging fiscal outlook, paled into insignificance as yield hungry investors took the chance to buy into what remains an economic outperformer in Latin America.

Two long-established, but long-absent, Brazilian issuers have turned to international bond markets as US dollar bonds become a more competitive option for the country’s issuers.

Chile completed its $3.3bn of external funding needs for the year in two days this week, tapping both euro and dollar markets for green bonds that EM accounts say are becoming increasingly important for their end investors.