{"id":18308,"date":"2018-08-31T12:37:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T09:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/?p=18308"},"modified":"2018-08-31T12:37:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T09:37:23","slug":"greek-banks-covered-debt-outshines-bonds-sold-by-european-peers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/archives\/18308","title":{"rendered":"Greek Banks’ Covered Debt Outshines Bonds Sold by European Peers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greek Banks’ Covered Debt Outshines Bonds Sold by European Peers<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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  • Covered bonds sold by Greek lenders outperform benchmark<\/li>\n
  • Notes may see upgrades, fueling demand, Commerzbank says<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n
    By\u00a0Irene Garc\u00eda P\u00e9rez(Bloomberg) —<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
    One corner of Greece\u2019s debt market is showing signs of life as the nation\u2019s battered lenders inch toward recovery.Covered bonds issued by Greek banks have outpaced a Bloomberg Barclays euro-denominated benchmark for the debt this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

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    \nGreece turned a page on the sovereign debt crisis that exploded eight years ago, exiting a bailout on Aug. 20. Earlier in the month, Fitch Ratings upgraded the country one step to BB- citing improved \u201cgeneral government debt sustainability\u201d and noting that confidence in the banking sector is rising.<\/p>\n

    Upgrades may follow of Greek covered bonds, which are backed by assets including home loans and considered lower risk, according to\u00a0Michael Weigerding, an analyst at Commerzbank AG based in Frankfurt. Promotion to investment grade would make them eligible for inclusion in indexes of high-quality debt, thereby fueling demand from a broader base of investors.<\/p>\n

    They \u201ccould benefit from investment mandates that can only invest in investment grade-rated bonds,\u201d Weigerding said.<\/p>\n

    In July, S&P global Ratings gave a \u2018BBB-\u2019 investment grade score to National Bank of Greece\u2019s covered bond program. NBG issued 750 million euros of covered securities in\u00a0October 2017\u00a0and it\u2019s now targeting further ratings hikes.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe are focusing our efforts on getting another investment-grade rating,\u201d said\u00a0Vassilis Kotsiras, head of funding solutions and structured finance at NBG. \u201cThat could potentially make our covered bonds eligible for the Iboxx index.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Moody\u2019s Investors Service rates the covered bonds of both National Bank of Greece and Alpha Bank SA at Ba2, two steps into junk but with a positive outlook, which indicates that there could be an upgrade in the next 12 months to 18 months.<\/p>\n

    \u201cA lot of things will play out in the next few months,\u201d said Nondas Nicolaides, an analyst at Moody\u2019s Investors Service in Limassol, Cyprus.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt will take some time to see how the government is able to cope with its finances outside the support program, and whether we have any potential political development that could affect the capacity and the ability of the government to raise funds in the international capital markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

    While Greek covered bonds are coming back onto the radar for pension funds and other investors who can only allocate to lower-risk assets, the banks are unlikely to start issuing unsecured debt soon.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI think the rational way would be to see the sovereign come to the market with a benchmark transaction, let\u2019s say a 10-year bond, and that be followed by the banks issuing debt, probably secured first and then unsecured,\u201d said Dimitris Nikolos, head of investor relations at Eurobank Ergasias SA.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

    –With assistance from\u00a0Thomas Beardsworth\u00a0and\u00a0Katie Linsell.<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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     <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Greek Banks’ Covered Debt Outshines Bonds Sold by European Peers Covered bonds sold by Greek lenders outperform benchmark Notes may see upgrades, fueling demand, Commerzbank says By\u00a0Irene Garc\u00eda P\u00e9rez(Bloomberg) — One corner of Greece\u2019s debt market is showing signs of life as the nation\u2019s battered lenders inch toward recovery.Covered bonds issued by Greek banks have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12498,"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-18308","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\/18308","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=18308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18310,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308\/revisions\/18310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinsurance.gr\/a1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}