Cemex, a leading cement producer, said that it had sold $1 billion in seven-year bonds to help pay 2012 debt and avoid a repayment bottleneck. The notes to mature in 2018 will pay a coupon of 9 per cent and are callable after their fourth anniversary. Cemex said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission it was offering a private placement sold only to qualified institutional buyers and to offshore investors. In a further statement, the company said the funds were in part meant to reduce short-term refinancing risk. Monterrey-based Cemex, one of Latin America's top publicly-traded companies, also said it won approval from its bankers last month to use money from bond placements to prepay commercial paper maturing in 2012. Fitch Ratings assigned a B-plus/RR3 rating and added that the money raised would be used to repay debt, while Standard and Poor's gave 'B' rating.