Year: 2022

Winner: Vale

The old cliché that every challenge is also an opportunity could aptly apply to the winner of the
award for Corporate Liability Management of the Year.
In June 2022, when capital markets were shaken by geopolitical and macroeconomic
uncertainty, Brazilian miner Vale decided to buy back up to $1 billion in bonds to improve the
profile of its debt. At the time, the company had plentiful reserves of cash to hand and believed
that bondholders would be open to accept a tender offer on terms that were favorable to the
company.
“Political and geopolitical instability was partially responsible for the global hike in interest
rates, which as a result made attractive the buying back of the bonds,” says Vale’s CFO
Gustavo Pimenta. “The tender offer was very well received by bondholders and there was no
need to adapt the structure to convince investors to participate.”
The tender offer was in fact so successful that the company decided to up the value to $1.3
billion. Pimenta and his team decided to innovate and opted to launch a “droppable” any-andall tender of six series of bonds ranked in order of priority, as suggested by its bankers.
“We chose this format so that we did not get too far from the buy-back limit defined by the
offer,” Pimenta says. “Also because it is a structure that, thanks to its fastest execution period,
is more favourable in periods of high market volatility.”
According to the company, the deal aimed to prioritize repurchases of notes with maturities in
2026 while paying a modest premium.
“Among our goals, we wanted to reduce short-term debt, as there was a concentration of debt
in that period and take advantage of an attractive pricing at the time to repurchase bonds,”
Pimenta says. “We believe we have achieved both goals.” LF


SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS:
Joint Deal Managers: Citi; BMO; Credit Agricole; MUFG; Scotiabank; SMBC Nikko
Issuer’s Legal Advisors: Cleary Gottlieb; Stikeman Elliott; Walkers
Dealer Managers’ Legal Advisors: Gibson Dunn; Pinheiro Guimarães
Issuer’s Trustee: BNY Mellon
Tender/Information Agent: D.F. King & Co

All supporting financial institutions and law firms were transmitted to LatinFinance by the
award category winners. For updates please email awards@latinfinance.com