South America

The Bank of Nova Scotia’s Chilean subsidiary turned to the Swiss franc for its debut international bond sale on Tuesday, achieving a cost of funding well inside what it could have achieved in the domestic market.

Brazilian financial name BTG Pactual is set to price a tap of its 4.5% senior unsecured January 2025s on Thursday, with bankers expecting the bank’s strong recent performance to outweigh a market starting to show signs of new issue fatigue after a busy June.

Chile turned to international investors for the fifth time this year on Wednesday — and the first time in local currency — to sell over $2bn-equivalent of social bonds, with foreign buyers taking nearly half the deal.

Brazil sold $2.25bn of dollar bonds across two tranches on Tuesday, taking advantage of a strong primary market window that is leaving some bond buyers underwhelmed with pricing.

Suzano, the Brazilian pulp and paper producer that last year became the second company in the world to sell a sustainability-linked bond (SLB), returned to capital markets on Monday with a $1bn long 10 year deal that has a coupon linked to different key performance indicators from its first deal.

Peruvian power generation company Orazul has launched a tender offer for a portion of its 2027 bonds and will use proceeds from last year’s sale of its transmission businesses to fund the liability management. Fitch had anticipated the prepayment of the notes back in August 2020, when it placed Orazul’s credit rating on positive watch.

Brazilian financial services firm XP opted for a five year maturity on its debut bond issue on Thursday, attracting $1.7bn of orders on the way to a $750m trade.

The Argentine province of Chaco wrapped up a debt restructuring on Thursday after more than 90% of its bondholders agreed to push out the maturity and reduce the coupon of its $250m 2024s. But the Province of Buenos Aires continued to frustrate bondholders, who said negotiations have stalled more than a year after the country’s largest regional government defaulted.

Glarner Kantonalbank dipped into the tier two market this week to raise an index eligible bond that may fund the redemption of the additional tier one (AT1) the bank rolled over in December due to coronavirus volatility. GLKB was joined on screens by a flurry of financial activity out of Chile.

Frigorífico Concepción, the Paraguay beef exporter, is looking to sell new bonds to refinance its senior secured 2025s just six months after it last tapped the notes.

Argentine dairy company Mastellone Hermanos will push ahead with a distressed debt exchange after holders of an additional $3m of its 2021 bonds agreed to participate in the swap since last week’s early-bird deadline. The extra participation means the minimum take-up threshold for the offer has been reached.

Analysts said that Argentina’s deal to postpone $2bn of debt owed to the Paris Club was a credit positive, though it was not enough to halt another recent fall in the sovereign’s bond prices as the medium-term likelihood of a default remains high.