Brazil

Nexa Resources, the mining arm of Brazilian conglomerate Votorantim, issued $500m of 10 year bonds on Monday, offering a healthy concession to its existing curve and seeing its new bond catch a broader rally on the break.

As sovereigns and corporates from all corners of the word suffer rating downgrades at an alarming rate, Brazilian meatpacker JBS bucked the trend on Tuesday as Fitch upgraded the borrower to BB+, just one notch away from investment grade status.

Nexa Resources, the mining arm of Brazilian conglomerate Votorantim, overcame a soft start to the week in international markets to raise $500m on Monday, with investors saying the company had offered a generous pick-up to its existing notes.

While leading economists fret about a reckoning to come for emerging market debt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, for vast swathes of EM issuers bond market business is brisk. Despite dire data and forecasts, dollar funding costs for some sovereigns are nearing pre-crisis levels as investors grasp at any sort of yield. The rally may have further to run, write Ross Lancaster and Oliver West.

Brazil became the third Latin American issuer in three days to find bond buyers willing to place large orders even as pricing was pushed below their initial demands, as it raised $3.5bn of five and 10 year paper to provide arguably the starkest example yet that technicals are trumping fundamentals primary emerging market new issues.

State-owned oil and gas giant Petrobras finally brought some bond supply from Brazil on Wednesday but, as the new issue traded down on the break, bankers said few Latin American issuers were likely to be persuaded of the benefits of tapping international markets in the short term.

Investors and bankers said that Petrobras had achieved exceptionally tight pricing on Wednesday as the oil and gas giant became the first Brazilian issuer to tap international bond markets in times of coronavirus amid a strong rally in corporate paper from the country.

Alantra is buffing its credit portfolio advisory team with the addition of Marcus Evans and Christos Stefanidis, who will join as managing directors in the UK and Greece. The credit portfolio advisory firm is also opening up offices in Latin America and China.

Rating agencies say that senior unsecured bondholders in Latam Airlines face bleak recovery prospects after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the largest airline in Latin America to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US.

Investors say that bond markets are wide open for many Brazilian companies, but even as access to credit has suddenly become a major topic for the country's corporate executives, most of the cash-rich companies they run are shying away from international markets and betting that they will be able to achieve better borrowing terms in the future than are on offer today.

Rating agencies have continued their policy of taking swift action on Latin American governments as Standard & Poor’s removed its positive outlook from Brazil, the region’s largest economy, citing political opposition to President Jair Bolsonaro as a key reason.

China’s importance in global pulp and zinc markets puts pulp producers Suzano and Arauco — alongside Peruvian miner Volcán — among the Latin American corporates most vulnerable to the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, according to Fitch Ratings.