{"id":17926,"date":"2018-07-12T11:41:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T08:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/?p=17926"},"modified":"2018-07-12T11:41:34","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T08:41:34","slug":"the-bond-market-is-getting-ready-to-have-greece-back-in-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/archives\/17926","title":{"rendered":"The Bond Market Is Getting Ready to Have Greece Back in the Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Bond Market Is Getting Ready to Have Greece Back in the Game<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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  • Hellenic Telecom sees 1.8 billion euros of orders at bond sale<\/li>\n
  • Greek yields among the most attractive in Europe: BlackRock<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n
    By\u00a0John Ainger\u00a0and\u00a0Tasos Vossos(Bloomberg) —<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
    There\u2019s a buzz in the bond market: Greece is back.As the country nears an exit from years of economic bailouts, government debt yields have fallen dramatically from the 2012 peak in a sign that investors are warming up to the prospect of its return to debt markets. And issuers — sovereign and other — are wasting no time in getting things going.<\/p>\n

    Finance minister\u00a0Euclid Tsakalotos\u00a0has been on a marketing tour through the world\u2019s financial capitals amid speculation that Greece will sell more bonds this year. Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA, the nation\u2019s biggest corporate borrower, has attracted more than 1.8 billion euros ($2.1 billion) of investor orders for its 400 million-euro sale of four-year notes.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Things are looking a lot better for the country, after being one of the worst-hit by the European debt crisis and having to rely on 300 billion euros in foreign aid since 2010. Greece now runs a budget surplus and was upgraded last month by S&P Global Ratings to B+. While that is below investment grade, the rating boost combined with yields that are still among the euro area\u2019s highest should help spur demand for a fresh bond offering.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt will definitely have demand, there\u2019s no question about that,\u201d\u00a0Scott Thiel, a money manager in London at BlackRock Inc., said in a telephone interview. \u201cDollar investments are very expensive and there\u2019s nothing in Europe that\u2019s going to offer this kind of yield.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Greek Bond Officials Need to Say \u2019Carpe Diem\u2019: Marcus Ashworth<\/p>\n

    Greece\u2019s 10-year government bond yield was 3.88 percent Thursday, down from 7.89 percent two years ago and about 40 percent in 2012. It is still well above similar-maturity rates of 2.70 percent in Italy, 1.31 percent in Spain and 0.37 percent in Germany.<\/p>\n

    Hellenic Telecommunications, whose biggest shareholder is Deutsche Telekom AG with a 45 percent stake, cut the yield at its debt sale to a range between 2.5 percent and 2.625 percent from an initial target of about 2.75 percent — a sign of buoyant demand. CreditSights and Kepler Cheuvreux say the company may be set for a credit upgrade to BB+, from BB currently.<\/p>\n

    While Greece has no financing needs until 2022, Prime Minister\u00a0Alexis Tsiprasmay want to take advantage of the drop in borrowing costs and the improved investor sentiment by selling bonds. The country has successfully held two debt sales since July 2017.<\/p>\n

    Scant Trading<\/h3>\n

    \u201cJust because they don\u2019t have cash needs, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s unimportant to find where the bond market will price,\u201d said\u00a0Andrew Jackson, head of fixed income at Hermes Investment Management. \u201cNow is a good time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Greylock Capital Management — which invests in undervalued, distressed and high-yield assets and has $1 billion under management — would like to see Greece sell securities maturing in 20 to 30 years, according to\u00a0Diego Ferro, a co-chief investment officer at the fund. Meanwhile, Algebris Investments money manager\u00a0Alberto Gallo\u00a0still sees the nation\u2019s bonds due in less than 10 years as \u201cundervalued.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Still, there\u2019s a case for caution. Greece\u2019s debt as a proportion of its gross domestic product remains the highest in Europe at 180 percent, while its unemployment rate is at 20 percent. Per-capita GDP now trails that of Estonia after being more than double the former Soviet nation\u2019s before the crisis, according to European Union statistics.<\/p>\n

    The current lack of trading in Greek bonds also damps their appeal, especially after the recent turmoil in the Italian debt market. Bank of Greece data show that turnover on the electronic secondary market totaled 331 million euros last month, down from 434 million euros in May. That compares with a peak of 136 billion euros in September 2004.<\/p>\n

    While a new debt sale would provide an opportunity to enter the market, getting out is a more challenging affair, BlackRock\u2019s Thiel said.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

    (Updates bond-bid figures in third paragraph, prices in sixth and adds details on Greek economic indicators in 11th.)<\/section>\n
    –<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Bond Market Is Getting Ready to Have Greece Back in the Game Hellenic Telecom sees 1.8 billion euros of orders at bond sale Greek yields among the most attractive in Europe: BlackRock By\u00a0John Ainger\u00a0and\u00a0Tasos Vossos(Bloomberg) — There\u2019s a buzz in the bond market: Greece is back.As the country nears an exit from years of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17928,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17926\/revisions\/17928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}