The world of Latin debt capital markets is becoming increasingly competitive. It's no longer the domain of a handful of large New York institutions: there's money to be made, and a lot of different banks are interested in making it.
In September, for instance, Banco Industrial, the biggest bank in Guatemala, decided to start securitizing its income stream from remittances. It's the kind of structure that Latin banks have been using for many years, but it marks Industrial's first foray into the international capital markets, so they obviously wanted to get the deal done right.
In the end, they didn't choose a New York house at all: they chose Wachovia, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Bond issues from central American issuers are rare beasts even in today's fluffy markets, and bonds lead managed outside the New York area are even rarer. But in reality, the difficult part of getting such deals done is building the relationship rather than selling the bonds. In this case, for instance, the first tranche of the bonds was wrapped by monoline insurer XL Capital, giving it a triple-A credit rating and guaranteeing a market for the paper.