Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. clearly doesn’t like to be kept waiting. When the Brazilian state-controlled oil and gas company, known as Petrobras, decided to tap the markets in a record-breaking $11 billion U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission–registered notes issue,
it allowed Francesca Odell and her team at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton the grand total of three days to get the deal done. The offering, designed to help finance the company’s ambitious five-year, $237 billion spending and investment plan—including its development of the “pre-salt” reserves in the Brazilian continental shelf, believed to contain over 50 billion barrels of oil—was the largest debt offering ever by an emerging markets company.
