Record year for emerging corporate bonds
The past 24 hours have brought news of more fund launches targeting emerging corporate debt; Barings and HSBC have started a fund each while ING Investment Management said its fund launched late last year had crossed $100 million. We have written about the seemingly insatiable demand for corporate emerging bonds in recent months, with the asset class last month surpassing the $1 trillion mark. Data from Thomson Reuters shows today that a record $263 billion worth of EM corporate debt has already been underwritten this year by banks, more than a fifth higher than was issued in the same 2011 period (see graphic):
The biggest surge has come from Latin America, the data shows, with Brazilian companies accounting for one-fifth of the issuance. A $7 billion bond from Brazil’s state oil firm Petrobras was the second biggest global emerging market bond ever.
The top 10 EM corporate bonds of the year: Petrobras issued the two biggest bonds of $7 billion and $3 billion, followed by Venezuela’s PDVSA and Indonesia’s Petramina. Brazil’s Santander Leasing was in fifth place, Mexican firms PEMEX and America Movil were sixth and seventh. Chilean miner CODELCO, Brazil’s Banco do Brasil and Russia’s Sberbank also entered the list.
The hunger for yield is trumping any concerns about the companies themselves or even broader emerging market risks. So far investors have not been disappointed; emerging corporate debt on JP Morgan’s benchmark CEMBI index have delivered dollar-based returns of around 15 percent this year, easily outstripping the 10 percent gains on global corporate debt.
No BRIC without China
Jim O’ Neill, creator of the BRIC investment concept, has been exasperated by repeated calls in the past to exclude one or another country from the quartet, based on either economic growth rates, equity performance or market structure. In the early years, Brazil’s eligibility for BRIC was often questioned due to its anaemic growth; then it was the turn of oil-dependent Russia. Over the past couple of years many turned their sights on India due to its reform stupor. They have suggested removing it and including Indonesia in its place.
All these detractors should focus on China.
China’s validity in BRIC has never been questioned. Aside from the fact that BRI does not really have a ring, that’s not surprising. China’s growth rates plus undoubted political and economic clout on the international stage put it head and shoulders above the other three. And after all, it is Chinese demand which drives a large part of the Russian and Brazilian economies.
Lower rates give no respite to Brazil stocks
In normal times, an aggressive central bank campaign to cut interest rates would provide fodder for stock market bulls. That’s not happening in Brazil. Its interest rate, the Selic, has fallen 350 basis points since last August and is likely to fall further at this week’s meeting to a record low of 8.5 percent. Yet the Sao Paulo stock market is among the world’s worst performers this year, with losses of around 4 percent. That’s better than fellow BRIC Russia but far worse than India and China.
Brazil’s central bank and government are understandably worried about a Chinese growth slowdown that would eat into Brazilian commodity exports. They are therefore hoping that rate cuts will prepare the domestic economy to take up the slack.
But the haste to cut interest rates appears to have spooked some foreign investors, with many seeing the moves as evidence of political pressure on the central bank. A closely-watched survey from Bank of America/Merill Lynch showed that fund managers had swung into a net 14 percent underweight on Brazil in May from a net overweight of over 20 percent in April (See graphic). This is the first time investors have turned negative on Brazil since February 2011, BofA/ML said.
