To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please <a href="http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=2a8db5c9-c9cc-42cb-aa43-65fba9ab0311" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onkeypress="window.open(this.href);return false;">click here</a>. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com But that wasn’t the whole story. It was also year of trem

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Designed to qualify as Tier 1 capital under the new Basel III rules and pre-empt a surge in supply across the globe, Banco do Brasil’s US$1.75bn Tier 1 perpetual bond tested new ground. It may not have been the first instrument of this type – Credit Suisse and Rabobank had already tried their own versions – but this was a debut for the emerging market universe and an important benchmark for Brazilian and L

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. It was the roadshow to end all roadshows – a fortnight long, encompassing 35 cities, 12 countries, and more than 150 one-on-one meetings. And when all was said and done, Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico attracted US$22bn in demand for its US$4.1bn deal. With that kind of investor interest, the bank could have pushed pricing but showed restraint instead. The deal was priced on September 25 at Ps31.25 – the

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Syndicating US dollar loans in Latin America became a dying art in late 2011 and 2012 as European banks moved into risk-off mode and shrunk the number of institutions participating in the market. Asian, US and local banks moved in to fill the void, but loan volumes continued to fall, with the region’s borrowers raising just US$20bn in the 12 months from mid-November 2011.   In years past, steel products pr

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Latin American borrowers have been tapping bond markets in other parts of the region for several years, with each country doing its best to create a memorable title for each. Mexico’s America Movil has raised funds in Chile’s Huaso market, while several years ago Chilean retailer Cencosud tapped Peru’s Inca market, just to name two examples. Priced at par to yield 7% (or 125bp over Colombian government TES

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. The method with which Citigroup has rebuilt its equity capital markets business in the US is, without doubt, controversial. The bank upset the US ECM apple cart – and rival bankers – by opening its chequebook to buy block transactions. Doing so led to Citigroup ending IFR’s 2012 awards year in top spot for US ECM with league table credit of US$25.5bn across 182 deals. The bank’s 12.5% market share was comf

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. There were few enough moments of bipartisan accord in Barack Obama’s first term as US president. But one was the April 5 2012 signing of the awkwardly-titled Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. In theory, the act’s passing, bringing together Democrats and Republicans, was a win-win. Certainly, the legislation’s ambitions were laudable and well-intentioned. It lifted a previous ban against public so

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. There have been plenty of headlines out of Argentina in 2012, and few have spelt joy for investors. An Argentine court ordered the seizure of Chevron’s local assets. The country’s Chaco province defaulted when the central bank blocked it from accessing US dollars. And there was the small matter of the government expropriating Spain’s stake in domestic oil producer YPF, a surprise bit of nationalisation tha

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. While the Basel III regulations have yet to be set in stone, many banks believe the new capital and liquidity requirements will stifle all kinds of lending across the spectrum, from interbank loans to commercial paper backstops. Even ECB president Mario Draghi has suggested that the liquidity requirements are “overly conservative”, and banks are trying to loosen some of the proposed regulation. The industr

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Ally Financial sought bankruptcy protection for its sub-prime mortgage unit Residential Capital on May 14 after months of carefully choreographed negotiations. Among the most important steps was locking up financing that would keep ResCap from triggering defaults on its mortgage servicing contracts – defaults which would have allowed trustees to snatch lucrative servicing pacts, setting off an all-out war

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Few recent deals come close to matching the US$13.3bn loan package that helped finance Kinder Morgan’s US$38bn acquisition of Texas-based El Paso Corp and created the third-largest US energy company with an enterprise value of around US$94bn. The loan was the largest sole underwriting ever for a US non-investment grade company and the second-largest sole underwriting ever for a US loan in any ratings categ

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. The ability of Priceline, a notoriously shrewd company, to virtually name its own price on a US$1bn convertible bond in March was the type of iconic transaction that showed what was possible on terms and pricing. Against a backdrop of pent-up investor demand, the online travel broker managed to print a six-year unsecured CB with 50% a conversion premium paying a 1% coupon. The aggressive terms – the conver

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Corporations that had the flexibility to choose a funding route almost universally opted for straight debt over any equity-linked solution in 2012. Enticed by low interest rates and tightening credit spreads, there was little need to expose shareholders to the risk of dilution. “I think people were surprised by the light volumes that we’ve seen this year as well as over the past three years,” said Steven W

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. The fifth and largest selldown of the US Treasury Department’s position in American International Group on September 10 2012 was a triumph not only for AIG itself, but the Obama administration and US taxpayers as well. The sale highlighted a profitable exit that few would have thought possible when the Treasury, along with the Federal Reserve, committed US$182bn of taxpayer funds as the insurer verged on c

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. Fortescue Metal’s covenant-lite loan was a game-changer in terms of size and structure – the deal was twice as big as the next largest loan – and set a new benchmark for just how much senior secured paper the market could absorb. The size of Fortescue’s loan would have made it a tough sell, even in the best of times, but the world’s fourth-largest iron ore producer was staring down the double-barrel of plu

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. The US institutional term loan market was one of the highlights of a lacklustre 2012 in the global loan market and Credit Suisse shone as a favourite of issuers, equity sponsors and leveraged loan investors alike. It is no secret that the bank structures aggressive deals that sometimes push the envelope on leverage, covenants or pricing but loan investors consistently rank Credit Suisse highly for market i

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. When Bank of America Merrill Lynch – a North American colossus known for its extensive balance sheet and deep pockets – stepped back from leading roles in refinancings for large US household names in April, it marked a departure from the old model of relationship lending to America’s top companies towards a focus on increased profitability. When a US bank the size of BofA Merrill makes such a shift in stra

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. The New York Federal Reserve’s stunningly successful and dramatic first CRE CDO sale in late April from its US$47bn Maiden Lane III portfolio of toxic AIG assets opened the floodgates for securitised products and tightened spreads for the remainder of the year. In short, it turned the tide for the risk product. The deal captivated the market, did not disrupt pricing with a flood of supply, inspired confide

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. There was finally a sense of normality and “back to business” in the renewal of strong vanilla deal flow in 2012 that had not been seen since the onset of the financial crisis. There was also a critical resurgence of interest in securitised products – particularly CLOs and CMBS – because of the strong yields they offered investors in the midst of an historically low interest rate environment. Citigroup nev

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Americas Review of the Year, please click here. In August 2007, HD Supply, a wholesale distributor of building and home improvement products, was acquired by Bain Capital, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and The Carlyle Group from Home Depot. But as the financial crisis unfolded, the deal unravelled. Home Depot agreed to a reduced purchase price of US$8.5bn from US$10.3bn, but underwriters on the debt were still unable to find buyers. Eventually, a handful