Caption: John Tonelli
In Brief
- The Launch: Backed by Central American financial giant Grupo Financiero Atlántida, BancAtlantic Capital is a newly launched New York-based investment bank targeting ‘underserved,’ emerging markets.
- Caribbean Expansion: Chairman and CEO John Tonelli confirmed the firm plans to open a physical office in Port of Spain, making Trinidad and Tobago and the wider English-speaking Caribbean a primary focus.
- Corporate Focus: While BancAtlantic will assist sovereigns with debt issuances, Tonelli sees massive, untapped potential in structuring financing for private companies and the region’s energy transition.
- Track Record: Tonelli brings 30 years of Wall Street experience, using his background in securitisation to execute landmark deals—including a creative financing structure that saved Suriname’s state oil company from a financial crisis in 2016.
By Prior Beharry
With a strategic focus on underserved emerging markets and the backing of Central American financial powerhouse Grupo Financiero Atlántida, newly launched BancAtlantic Capital is setting its sights on the Caribbean—with Trinidad and Tobago firmly on its radar.
Led by Chairman and CEO John Tonelli, 61, a Wall Street veteran with three decades of experience at institutions like J.P. Morgan, Bear Stearns, and Oppenheimer & Co., the New York-based investment bank aims to bridge the gap between global capital markets and smaller issuers often overlooked by bulge-bracket banks.
In an exclusive interview with AZP News, Tonelli outlined BancAtlantic’s ambitious roadmap. This includes providing innovative financing solutions for sovereigns and corporates, leveraging a strong legal background to structure complex deals, and expanding its physical footprint into the English-speaking Caribbean.
A strategic launch supported by regional might
The catalyst for BancAtlantic’s launch stems from the expansive reach of its parent company. Grupo Financiero Atlántida is a dominant financial force in Central America, having also made strategic investments in Spain via EBN Banco, and in the US with a recent 8.1% acquisition of Miami-based US Century Bank.
“Grupo Financiero Atlantida sees significant opportunities to help other issuers in Central America and elsewhere to access the capital markets, and has decided to establish a presence in New York to have direct access,” Tonelli said.
He stressed that the parent company is one of the few Central American corporates to issue bonds internationally.
Unlike traditional boutique firms that focus solely on advisory services like mergers and acquisitions, BancAtlantic leverages a massive institutional balance sheet.
Tonelli said, “We have affiliated commercial banks, insurance companies, and asset managers that can provide loans, buy bonds, make strategic investments, and otherwise support our mandates.”
He said, “If international investors see that the local institutions are investing, that instils confidence.”
This structure allows the firm to target regions largely ignored by tier-one global banks. According to Tonelli, major banks chase large, liquid mandates to boost their league table rankings, leaving regions like the Caribbean, Central America, and Central Asia underserved because their deals often fall below index size and carry higher sovereign risk.
“These mandates are typically more difficult to execute because the issuers are new to the capital markets, and therefore the deals are much harder to sell,” he said.
Sights set on Trinidad and Tobago
For Trinidad and Tobago, currently navigating economic diversification and foreign exchange challenges, BancAtlantic’s entry could provide timely avenues for capital. Tonelli confirmed that the English-speaking Caribbean is “absolutely,” a target market for the firm’s investment banking and advisory services.
Beyond assisting Caribbean sovereigns and state-owned enterprises with future debt issuances or restructuring, Tonelli sees massive potential in the private sector and the region’s energy transition.
“The opportunities to structure financings for companies and private businesses is even more interesting and rewarding than sovereign financings,” Tonelli told AZP News. He pointed out that most regional sovereigns are frequent issuers who do not require highly specialised structuring.
He said, “Corporate issuers are still a very limited universe, and the large majority of them are large companies or state-owned entities. This leaves a vast number of corporates that have not accessed the capital markets.”
The Wall Street edge: Structuring complex deals
Tonelli’s approach to emerging markets is heavily informed by his early career as a corporate attorney at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. There, he took US domestic securitisation technology—originally developed with entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—and applied it to emerging markets.
Throughout his career, he has structured landmark, first-of-their-kind bonds for the Dominican Republic, Panama, Argentina, and Guyana. He noted that his legal background was crucial in creating award-winning structures, such as a 2010 bond for the Argentine Airport System that was uniquely secured by passenger fees and received a rating higher than the sovereign itself.
He noted a critical intervention in Suriname as a testament to this specialty. In 2016, amid plummeting oil prices, Suriname’s state oil company, Staatsolie, was at risk of losing a vital 5% stake in the Merian Gold Mine and defaulting on a US$600 million syndicated loan. Credit Suisse had deemed a sovereign bond issuance unfeasible due to a lack of investor interest.
“Fortunately, I was able to fund the government’s pro rata payment on the Merian Mine and refinance some debt with the Bridge Note,” Tonelli recalled.
He then structured a US$300 million loan from the government to Staatsolie, funded by an inaugural US$550 million sovereign bond. He added, “Once oil and gold prices began to rise, Staatsolie was able to repay its loan from the government within two years. These transactions not only solved a major problem for the country and its oil industry, but perhaps more importantly, they helped to avert a real crisis.”
Market evolution and the road ahead
Looking at the evolution of emerging markets over his three-decade career, Tonelli noted that the asset class has matured significantly since the liquidity injections of the Brady Plan. Crucially, markets have decoupled; a crisis in one developing nation no longer automatically triggers a sell-off in another.
“Stress on Argentina’s bonds does not affect the Kazakh bonds, for example,” he noted.
While expropriation was once a primary fear for investors, Tonelli said that risk is now largely a thing of the past. Today, the focus is squarely on default risk and poor policy management, which can quickly destroy bond value even without a formal default.
To navigate this landscape and drive growth, BancAtlantic will initially rely on its investment banking and placement activities, supported by a robust sales and trading arm to provide secondary market liquidity.
Crucially for the region, the firm’s physical expansion plans are already in motion.
“We expect to have a presence in the English-speaking Caribbean, likely in Port of Spain, and in the Dominican Republic, where we expect to establish or acquire a strategic financial institution,” Tonelli revealed, adding that the firm is also acquiring a stake in a broker-dealer in Central Asia.
With a tailored approach to complex structuring and a willingness to engage where larger banks retreat, BancAtlantic Capital appears poised to become a significant new player in the Caribbean’s financial ecosystem.
