Argentina: Domestic capital markets rebound after liquidity crash

"The local corporate bond market was getting better and more liquid before the nationalization of the pension funds in 2008 [into the publicly held National Association of Social Security]. Then liquidity shrank. Anses continued to buy some of these bonds but some issuance shrank," says Pablo Perez Marexiano, director of corporate banking at Standard Bank. Anses has continued to buy bonds related to infrastructure, with purchasing decisions more policy oriented than commercially driven. Despite this, Moody’s says local market volumes grew strongly in 2010 following a mild decline in 2009. Total issuance totalled the equivalent of $4,278 million in the first 11 months of 2010 (the latest data available), an increase of 86.5%.