Latin America’s loan markets in 2025 faced tighter financial conditions than bond markets, as higher base rates and geopolitical uncertainty dampened risk appetite and pushed borrowers to prioritize strategic financings over opportunistic growth. Activity remained resilient, but competition among arrangers was shaped by who could still deliver large, complex and cross-border transactions in a more selective environment.
While several banks vied for leadership, Citi’s depth of execution and breadth of mandate made its position more clearly defined than in any other debt category, building on its Loan House of the Year win from the previous awards cycle.
Nicolas Bendersky, the head of Loan Syndications & Acquisition Finance – Latam at Citi, says that 2025 was a record year in terms of the breadth of activity across the company’s various clusters in Latin America. But getting to the top was not a walk in the park, as the segment had its ups and downs in the course of the year.
“The loan market in Latin America in 2025 presented a dynamic landscape. While the year initially started somewhat slowly, we observed a significant acceleration right before the end of the US Summer,” he says. “The third and fourth quarters, in particular, proved to be exceptionally busy across the region, with Mexico notably picking up significantly.”
One of the year’s most significant transactions was the $2 billion syndicated loan for the VMOS consortium to fund Argentina’s Vaca Muerta South oil pipeline. The financing united the country’s largest energy producers, including YPF, Pluspetrol, Pan American Energy, Vista Energy and Tecpetrol, into a single structure and attracted broad participation from international lenders. The deal ranked among the largest infrastructure loans ever executed in Argentina and demonstrated Citi’s ability to mobilize capital for projects central to national development and export growth.
Citi also played a pivotal role in Colombia’s largest corporate transaction by providing a $2 billion bridge loan to support the Nutresa acquisition. That facility was later taken out by a record-setting $2 billion bond issuance, highlighting Citi’s capacity to integrate lending and capital markets solutions across a single financing lifecycle and to manage execution risk during a complex corporate consolidation.
Cross-border acquisition finance became another defining pillar of Citi’s loan franchise. The bank structured the financing for Guatemala’s Castillo Hermanos in its $1.1 billion acquisition of a US beverage company, a transaction that required parallel credit facilities in Guatemala and the United States to accommodate different regulatory regimes and investor bases. Citi executed similar structures for other regional acquirers, including CMI Foods and Trinidad and Tobago’s Ansa McAL, reinforcing its position as the leading arranger for complex cross-border M&A financing.
In Mexico, Citi arranged a highly customized three-facility financing for industrial REIT Vesta, positioning the company to capitalize on nearshoring trends reshaping manufacturing and logistics supply chains. It also structured a sustainability-linked loan for Mexico Tower Partners in local currency, illustrating how loan markets can support ESG objectives alongside corporate expansion even in a higher-rate environment.
Public-sector and infrastructure borrowers remained a core strength. Citi served as sole bookrunner on Panama Metro Line 3’s liability management financing and led refinancing transactions for Central America Bottling Corporation, its first syndicated loan in more than a decade. These transactions required careful timing and investor engagement in a market that had become increasingly selective.
“Activity was largely concentrated in two key areas: acquisition financing, especially driven by companies from Central America, and infrastructure financing, predominantly in the Andean Region,” Bendersky says.
Execution quality distinguished Citi’s loan portfolio from its peers. Several transactions achieved oversubscription, including financings for CMI Foods and Panama Metro Line 3, while others were completed during volatile periods through structure and syndication discipline rather than aggressive pricing alone.
Citi’s loan business in 2025 was defined less by headline volume and more by strategic relevance. In a year when many banks retrenched from riskier or cross-border credits, Citi continued to underwrite complex infrastructure, acquisition and refinancing financings that supported corporate expansion and regional development.
Bendersky is optimistic that the good dynamic showed at the end of the year still has some way to go.
“This positive momentum is partly a carry-over from mandates established in late 2025, but we are also actively building a robust pipeline for the second quarter,” he says.