"I'm supposed to be on vacation right now," says Peter Getsinger, who runs Latin American corporate finance at Bankers Trust, "but we have a long backlog of work. We seem to be the only house actually getting deals done. Some markets seem to be permanently closed."
What Getsinger is referring to is Bankers Trust's strength in high yield, structured deals in emerging markets as characterized by a recent $120 million note offering for the Argentine pre-packed bread leader Fargo. The notes replaced a bridge loan made by Bankers Trust last October as stock markets tumbled in reaction to Asia. The client is Exxel, a leveraged buy-out company sometimes described as the KKR of Argentina, which bought Fargo for $230 million and needed to complete by the end of October.
The Fargo deal follows a similar one for Exxel in pursuit of Supermercados Norte early last year when the price tag was $435 million. Merrill Lynch was the lead manager and Bankers the co-manager on that one.
Getsinger and colleague Arthur Penn, the head of global fixed income, hand round the relevant tombstones from a huge, dusty collection in his jumbled office on New York's Liberty Street.