US Loan House: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

New issuance in the LatAm market was strong in 2013, competition was fierce – and the top players ran neck-and-neck in terms of deal volumes. But as the clear leader in both geographical breadth and sheer variety of transactions, Citigroup is IFR’s Latin America Bond House of the Year. The global financial crisis caught up with Citigroup in the LatAm market in 2010, when it suffered a considerable loss of market share as local borrowers started turning away from an institution that has had a presence in the region for more than a century....

Hudson’s Bay Company’s acquisition of luxury department store Saks was savvy to say the least. In what was a hotly-contested purchase, the iconic Canadian retail company padded its US$2.9bn financing package with upfront equity commitments from cornerstone investors, allowing it to push sizing while limiting pro forma combined leverage.   Anchored by an upfront US$750m cheque from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and West Face Capital, the package allowed HBC to push funding to 10.4 times leverage, with subsequent funding taking pro forma...

Morgan Stanley snatched market share from money-centre banks in 2013 by providing issuers like Verizon with greater insight into what can be achieved in the US dollar market – and how to do it. As a result, the bank is IFR’s US Investment-Grade Bond House of the Year. When it came to providing Verizon an unprecedented US$61bn bridge loan for its US$130bn acquisition of Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless, Bank of America, Barclays, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley were the ones to step up to the plate, when other institutions were unable or...

For drawing on its own capital markets sophistication to help its portfolio companies issue US$60bn of debt and raise more than US$15bn of equity while also delivering solid returns for LPs and new public investors participating in its deals, Blackstone is IFR’s Americas Issuer of the Year. In January 2013, Blackstone’s imposing Park Avenue headquarters greeted some unusual guests. A pair of Magellanic penguins waddled their way through the private equity giant’s offices, posed for some Facebook and Twitter photos with executives, including...

America Movil proved itself to be a capital markets innovator once again in 2013, when the telecoms firm issued a US$2.8bn-equivalent three-tranche issue denominated in both sterling and euros. It was the first ever broadly distributed corporate hybrid from a Latin American issuer and the largest such trade done on an intra-day basis. Bankers had been pitching America Movil on the idea for quite some time, but the need to issue this type of subordinated capital arguably took on a greater sense of urgency in September as ratings agencies fretted...

Just how do you price a bond that’s nearly three times larger than anything ever seen in the history of the capital markets? That was the puzzler facing Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley as they were attempting to put together a deal to take out much of Verizon’s record US$61bn bridge loan used to buy out rival Vodafone from their US joint venture. The risks were high: the four active managers each had more than US$15bn of balance sheet on the line in the trade. They also had to figure out how to grapple with...

It’s hard to imagine anything other than Verizon’s US$49bn landmark offering in September winning the award for US Dollar Bond of the Year. Not only did the deal enable the US telecommunications company to finance its transformative US$130bn acquisition of Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless, but it also redefined what is possible in terms of acquisition financing. “It has reset the conversations around global finance by 180 degrees,” said Paul Spivack, head of investment-grade bond syndicate for Morgan Stanley, which was joint bookrunner...

Fuelled by more easy money from the Federal Reserve, the party was most definitely on as the aches and pains – and, more importantly, the worries – of the financial crisis seemed to disappear in the rear-view mirror. Some of the risky products and practices that not too long ago had an undesirable odour about them were suddenly back in favour. Just five years on from the crisis – one that seems to have changed the regulatory landscape of the markets forever – yield-starved investors practically stampeded over each other in the race to the...

Every once in a while, a deal comes along that simply breaks the mould – and redraws the map of what can be done in the global capital markets. The bond and loan package to fund Verizon’s US$130bn acquisition of Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless was a deal like that. For changing the landscape of the possible, it is IFR’s Americas Financing Package of the Year. In retrospect, the only thing that isn’t surprising about Verizon’s record-busting financing package is the psychological impact it has had on the market. Nothing had been seen like...

To be a leader in the high-yield market year after year requires co-ordination across sales, trading and origination, as well as strong financial sponsor relationships and the ability to switch between challenged credits and landmark acquisition financings. For doing just that, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is IFR’s US  High-Yield Bond House of the Year. There was rarely a day that Bank of America Merrill Lynch was not in the market with a high-yield deal in 2013. It was lead-left on 81 transactions in the first three quarters of the year,...

The first decade of the new century was one which directors of US-based stock exchanges would probably like to forget. While the nation’s banks profited from deregulation, its bourses sputtered. Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the constricting set of laws passed in response to the collapse of Enron and others, deterred a generation of foreigners from listing corporate vehicles in a country they once saw as a second home. For the likes of the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange the impact was profound. China’s leading state firms shifted their...

When it comes to local currency trades in Latin America over the awards period, it is impossible to ignore America Movil’s Ps15bn (US$1.2bn) dual-listed 10-year, as well as the series of taps that followed it. Not only was it the largest cross-border local currency trade seen from the region’s corporate borrower-base, it was an instrument that had broad global appeal – a trade that in one fell swoop sorted the illiquidity issue that had long been plaguing this asset class. While the Mexican telco may be unique in its ability to issue on such...