International capital markets’ deal activity in Latin America for the first quarter of 2019 was much lower than in the same period of 2018, but bankers aren’t panicking – yet.
At the beginning of this year, international investment bankers told Euromoney that they were confident that growth in Brazil would lead to strong deal numbers and volumes and drive an increase in regional activity.
But statistics from Dealogic show that the projections of improved deal-flow – expected to be driven by Brazilian deals – have failed to materialize.
Indeed, the regional performance in the international capital markets has been markedly worse than the previous year. In the first quarter of 2019, regional equity capital market (ECM) issuance was less than half that of 2018 in terms of volume ($3.6 billion from 12 deals compared to $7.7 billion from 18 deals). International debt issuance was also down by more than half, at $21.2 billion from 26 deals, compared to $44.6 billion from 41 deals. And M&A is also suffering: there were $12.6 billion of deals in the first quarter of this year (from 151 deals) compared to $26.9
