The International Finance Corp. (IFC) is understood to be involved in a securitization for Brazilian bank Unibanco, with Nomura Securities as lead. It is unclear whether the multilateral agency is providing a partial credit guaranty - as it has been doing in domestic securitization markets in Latin America - or is buttressing the transaction in some other way. "If the buyers require a slightly higher rating, it will probably be a guaranty," said a banker away from the transaction. The buyers in this case are Japanese, even though the underlying diversified payment rights (DPRs) are U.S. dollar flows, according to sources. Advising the underwriter is Dewey Ballantine. For the originator, domestic counsel is Pinheiro Neto, while cross-border counsel is Debevoise & Plimpton.
Last year, the IFC provided a partial credit guaranty on a Merrill Lynch-led deal for Banco BBA Creditanstalt, which was subsequently acquired by Banco Itau. Sized at US$50 million, that transaction was tier three subordinated debt and was not a securitization. Over the past year however, the IFC has used a partial guaranty to bolster transactions in Mexico, Chile and Colombia.
The Unibanco deal will apparently be coming off a DPR program that has already been tapped for US$225 million this year via Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and FitchRatings gave that deal Baa1'/'BBB-'/'BBB', respectively. The talk is that Japanese investors will want something a little higher. The IFC is rated triple A.
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