Peru

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.

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.

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.

Peruvian mining company Volcán is set to recover some lustre after a tricky 2020, proposing a liability management transaction and equity raise that should lower leverage and bring improvements to its rating.

Three of the most active banks in financing oil exports from the Ecuadorian Amazon — an environmentally destructive industry with a long track record of trampling on indigenous people’s rights — have agreed to cease important parts of their financial support, after pressure from NGOs and a devastating oil spill in 2020.

Despite funding stresses in certain Latin American countries, bond markets will continue to help the region with its financing needs. For now, this eases the pressure for reform and fiscal consolidation, but issuers must eventually face up to political and social turbulence. Oliver West reports.

After a torrid year, Peru’s domestic bond market is enjoying a minor resurgence this month. But with local pension funds still not offering corporate borrowers pre-crisis levels of funding, DCM bankers believe Peruvian companies may turn to international funding markets in greater numbers during 2021.

Political volatility might finally be biting in Peru, with Fitch putting the country's rating on negative outlook.

Jose Andrés Olivares Canchari, director general of Peru’s public treasury, is to leave his role this week for personal reasons, GlobalCapital understands.

Peru plans to return to its pre-pandemic strategy of focussing raising its funding from local currency markets, said the country’s director of public treasury after the sovereign became the fourth Latin American sovereign to sell a century bond on Monday as part of a $4bn deal.

Peru grabbed the bond market’s attention on Monday with a $4bn triple-tranche issue including a 100 year bond despite the country being on its third president this month. But the country’s public treasury director said it was the all-in yield, not the desire to make headlines, that drove Peru to become the fourth Latin American borrower ever to sell a century bond.

Peru will become the fourth Latin American borrower to issue a century bond on Monday, selling a triple-tranche dollar issue including a 100-year bond despite the fact that the the country is on its third president this month.