LatinFinance - January/February 2015 - 66

2014 Deals of the Year awards and 2014
Infrastructure Finance awards.
Among the award-winning deals on
which the firm advised was the biggest
M&A deal to be completed in the year
to September 30, 2014: the $5.85 billion
acquisition of the Las Bambas copper mine
in Peru by a consortium led by China's
MMG.
Rodrigo, Elías & Medrano advised
MMG on the acquisition, which wins the
2014 Cross-Border M&A Deal of the Year
award. One of the biggest Chinese mining
acquisitions in history, it is one of the
largest mines under construction anywhere
in the world and so of extreme importance
for Peru.
Meanwhile, the firm advised the owners
of the Cerro Verde mine on a five-year
senior unsecured loan, increased to $1.8
billion, for a $4.6 billion expansion of the
copper and molybdenum facility. That
deal, which closed in March, won Best
Mining Financing and Best Loan in the
Infrastructure Finance awards.
The winner of Best Port Financing in the
Infrastructure Finance awards was also a
Rodrigo, Elías & Medrano deal. The firm
advised BBVA, BCP and Natixis on this $100
million, 14-year limited recourse term loan,
closed in October 2013, for Transportadora
de Callao, a conveyor belt and dock to
transport minerals to a port, near Lima.
"It was a breakthrough transaction,"
Chabaneix says, referring to the novelty
in Peru of financing an export terminal
exclusively for minerals. Mining exports
have previously been brought to port
by truck and road, a slow method that
puts pressure on existing transport
infrastructure. LF

LAW FIRM: LATAM

Cleary Gottlieb
Experience and size have
helped this firm stay ahead
amid depressed economic
conditions in Brazil and
new opportunities
elsewhere
Among the most established international
law firms operating in Latin America,
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton's

66 LATINFINANCE.COM - January/February 2015

ANDRÉS DE LA CRUZ, CLEARY GOTTLIEB

"THERE WAS A CLEAR
INTEREST TO GET YPF
OUT INTO THE
MARKET, BUT IT WAS
NOT EASY. WE HELPED
THE BANKS PUT IT
TOGETHER"
franchise in the region is not weakening
with age. Not only does it maintain one of
the biggest teams of lawyers focused on
Latin America; it is has also worked with
such clients as Pemex, Mexico's stateowned oil company, for more than three
decades.
That size and record have stood the
firm in good stead and should continue to
position it well for the year ahead, when
partners expect increased business from
Mexico's energy companies as Pemex's
monopoly ends. The partners further
predict increased demand for restructuring
advice, as Brazilian companies struggle
under the tight economic environment in
that country.
Even during the period of these awards,
Cleary Gottlieb managed to maintain a
steady flow of business in Brazil, when
elections and the World Cup meant thin
activity in financial markets in the region's
biggest economy. "We've had another really
good year in Brazil, although the capital
markets work has been down. We've had a
lot of different types of work," says Richard
Cooper, a New York-based partner.
Also in Brazil, Cleary Gottlieb advised
Itaú-Unibanco on its $1.37 billion
acquisition of Citigroup's consumer finance
business in Brazil. It worked on an $8.5
billion multi-tranche and multi-currency
bond in January for Petrobras and was
counsel to Deutsche Bank in a $360 million
trade finance package related to Marfrig's
sale of its poultry division, Seara, to fellow
Brazilian protein company JBS.
Cleary Gottlieb was involved in many
important deals outside Brazil, too. It
advised lead managers Citi and HSBC on a
$150 million floating-rate bond sale by YPF
that closed in October 2013, the first month
of LatinFinance's awards period. It was the
first international bond offering from the
Argentine company in more than 10 years,
and it helped pave the way for a much

bigger deal a few months later.
"There was a clear interest to get YPF out
into the market, but it was not easy," says
Andrés de la Cruz, a partner in the Buenos
Aires office. The bond was backed by sales
of grain that YPF received from farmers
after selling them oil. "We helped the
banks put it together. It was a complicated
structure. This was not something
Argentine issuers are familiar with," De la
Cruz says.
In Mexico, Cleary Gottlieb worked
on a $2.15 billion triple-tranche bond
offering for Coca-Cola Femsa, which won
LatinFinance's Corporate High-Grade Bond
of the Year award. It worked on Cemex's
€400 million/$1 billion dual-tranche bond
in April, winner of Corporate High-Yield
Bond of the Year. Also in Mexico, it advised
JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and BBVA on
Grupo Lala's peso-denominated initial
public offering, which raised more than $1
billion equivalent. LF

BOND HOUSE

HSBC
Strengths in liability
management, debut transactions, and a range of
currencies and structures,
make this bank stand out
Latin American bond volumes and prices
reached new records in the past year. The
market also increased in sophistication.
Many of the big banks - including Citi,
Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, to name
a few - deserve praise for pricing complex
and well-structured debt deals for regional
issuers.
What made HSBC stand out from its
rivals was its activity in currencies other
than the dollar, its keenness to guide firsttime issuers in the often challenging task of
pricing a debut deal, and its work on more
complicated, value-added deals.
"We're a global house that doesn't only
focus on plain vanilla. We've become the
go-to house when there is something a little
bit more complex," says Katia Bouazza,
HSBC's head of Latin America capital
financing.
The bank managed many of the
landmark issues from Latin America this
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