LONDON: Greece is planning to return to the international bond market this month, four years after it became the first eurozone country to be bailed out and only two years since defaulting on its debts.
With Greece showing signs of pulling out of a crippling recession, the government aims to raise ¤2bn ($2.75bn) in a sale of five-year bonds, banking sources told Thomson Reuters markets service IFR yesterday.
A power company is also poised to become the first Greek state-controlled enterprise to sell bonds since Athens had to turn to the European Union and IMF for the rescue. Greece has been frozen out of long-term international borrowing since 2010 and imposed losses on private bondholders as recently as 2012 in a ¤130bn debt restructuring, meaning it will be staging one of the swiftest comebacks by a country from default.
Greek bond yields, which have fallen dramatically since the restructuring, hit fresh four-year lows yesterday after the country lined up a group of banks to manage the sale.
Two sources said Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have been given the mandate for the sale, which aims to benefit from a feeling that Greece is finally emerging from a crisis which has wiped a quarter off its economic output in the past six years.
Reuters
