| Deals of the year: Tech and telecoms illustrate the ups and downs of 2000 Author: Felix Salmon Issuer: ASUR Deal: IPOAmount: 335 millionSole bookrunner: UBS Warburg The Latin American IPO of the year was part of a ground-breaking structure from UBS Warburg, which advised Mexico that foreign strategic investors weren’t rich enough to pay top dollar for the country’s airports. Rather, the bank suggested, Mexico should sell 15% of the airports to a strategic partner, and then float the rest in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The Mexican government could have been forgiven for being sceptical. It had never privatized anything using the equity markets before, and no airport companies were already listed on NYSE. In fact, no airport in the Americas had ever had an IPO. What’s more, the last time any major Mexican company had listed on an exchange was a good four years previously. But Swiss bank UBS persuaded Mexico that it could transfer its expertise in Europe across the Atlantic. “Privatizations of airports are very much a European phenomenon, not an American phenomenon,” says Nicolas Millward, head of Latin American equity capital markets for UBS Warburg. |