Latin America
Best sovereign borrower (jointly awarded)
Mexico
After a world-beating performance last year, when the United States of Mexico easily won the global best sovereign borrower award, it was hard to see what the country could do to improve. And in fact the past year has not been nearly as headline-grabbing as the previous 12 months were. But that's a good thing: no borrower wants to be making waves the whole time. And what Mexico has done, it has done extremely professionally, ahead of the curve, and with continually tightening spreads.
The deals started with a e750 million 10-year bond in June, lead managed by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. For the first time ever, Mexico managed to achieve funding levels flat to the US curve on a swapped basis: historically, Europe has always been a more expensive place than the US to borrow. But after that, there was very little left to do in 2003: Mexico had long since met its financing needs for the year.
So it was something of a surprise when the sovereign returned to the capital markets with a 10-year dollar deal in October, through JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.