| Few would have predicted in the dark days that followed Mexico's disastrous devaluation of December 1994 that investors who had their fingers burnt would soon be clamouring for Latin debt again. Yet that is what has happened. Latin America, which appeared to have been shut out of the international capital markets, is back with a bang. Sovereign borrowers tentatively began to test their ability to tap the international markets soon after the initial scare. The response was more favourable than they could have expected, so much so that the big sovereign issuers, notably Mexico and Argentina, have since fired a salvo of successful issues. The trend gathered pace in 1996. In a November report, Salomon Brothers announced that "an avalanche of Latin American new issues has swept the international bond market". Latin issues accounted for 8% of total new international issues, compared with only 3.5% in 1995 and 5.1% in the previously record-breaking 1993. The $44 billion issued by end-October contrasts starkly with the $13.5 billion during the same period of 1995. "This has been an exceptional year and we will see a number of records broken in terms of issuance," says Moctar Fall, head of Latin American capital markets at Salomon Brothers. |