Greece ended a four-year exile from international markets with a bond sale of 3 billion euros ($4.2 billion), more than the government estimated.
The coupon on the bond, which will be settled next week, is 4.75 percent, with almost 90 percent of the issue going to long-term investors outside Greece, the Athens-based Finance Ministry said in an e-mailed statement announcing the sale. The order book for the issue exceeded 20 billion euros, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to speak about it. A Greek government official told reporters in Athens yesterday that the country sought to raise 2.5 billion euros.
“Greece returns to the bond markets under the same or even better terms than Ireland andPortugal,” Greek Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos told reporters in Athens earlier today after meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
“We welcome this,” Poul Thomsen, the IMF’s mission chief to Greece, said yesterday. “It’s a fundamental objective of the program to bring Greece back to market and this is an important milestone in this regard, and that clearly speaks to the success of the program.”
The yield on Greek 10-year bonds climbed five basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 5.94 percent at 2:24 p.m. Athens time. The rate fell 27 basis points yesterday, and touched 5.80 percent, the least since February 2010.
Greek securities returned 33 percent in the year through yesterday, the most among sovereign-debt markets tracked by the Bloomberg World Bond Indexes.
Greece won approval this month from euro-area members for an 8.3 billion-euro aid payment, the first disbursement from its bailout program since December. The government and European Union predict that the Greek economy will expand 0.6 percent in 2014 after six consecutive years of contraction that has cost about a quarter of the nation’s economic output and sent theunemployment rate surging.
“The real economy is showing encouraging signs of recovery,” Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said at a conference in Athens today.
Source: Bloomberg
Not a bad idea to take a chance on Greece,now that the picture is much better.
