τα πρωτα δειγματα
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-0 ... w-aid.html...Greece may receive as much as 85 billion euros ($124 billion) in new financing, including a contribution from private investors, in a second bailout aimed at preventing default and ending the euro-region’s debt crisis, according to an Austrian Finance Ministry official.
The package will total 190 billion euros to 195 billion euros, including the 110 billion euros from the original rescue a year ago, Thomas Wieser, head of the ministry’s economic policy and financial markets department, said at a briefing with Finance Minister Maria Fekter in Vienna late yesterday.
The International Monetary Fund will put up 30 percent of the new funds, with euro-region countries and private investors contributing the remaining 70 percent, Wieser said.
Europe’s latest attempt to prevent Greece’s fiscal frailty from infecting the entire region -- and the world -- comes after Prime Minister George Papandreou secured passage of 78 billion euros of additional budget cuts and revenue measures needed to meet the targets of the original bailout. Greece now needs more funds as record bond yields has left it locked out of markets and unable to meet the original plan’s goal of selling 30 billion euros of debt next year.
The yield premium that investors demand to buy 10-year Greek bonds over comparable German bunds rose 2 basis points to 13,325 basis points.
Private Investors
While German and French official have signaled a target of as much as 30 billion euros from private investors, “one can’t say reliably how much the private sector will contribute,” Fekter said. Any involvement has to be voluntary and can’t be allowed to trigger a credit default, she said.
Holders of Greek bonds are being asked to contribute to the plan by agreeing to roll over debt maturing in the next three years into longer-maturity bonds.
Fekter said that she expects to hear proposals on private investor involvement in the coming days. Euro-region finance ministers have scheduled a conference call for tomorrow to discuss the issue and the release of the fifth installment of aid from last year’s bailout. Greece needs that 12 billion-euro payment to meet a 6.6 billion-euro bond maturity in August.
German banks have agreed to roll over Greek bonds maturing through 2014, which amount to about 2 billion euros, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday in Berlin. The country’s so-called bad banks will provide 1.2 billion euros as well, he said.
Averting ‘Meltdown’
Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann, at a conference in Berlin yesterday with Chancellor Angela Merkel, predicted that financial companies would contribute to help avert a “meltdown.” German and French lenders are the biggest foreign holders of Greek debt.
Under a French proposal, bondholders would agree to roll over 70 percent of their debt maturing through mid-2014 into new 30-year Greek bonds with the principal on the new debt guaranteed through Greece investing in zero-coupon bonds of similar maturity. Under a second option, investors would roll over 90 percent of their debt into new five-year bonds with no guarantee.
The new bailout program, which should run from mid-2011 for three years, has to be “imagined as a cash-on-delivery agreement,” Wieser said, adding that the dates of paying out installments haven’t yet been set. Quarterly reviews of Greece’s progress by officials of the EU, IMF and European Central Bank that were part of the original package will continue under the new plan, Fekter said.
Aid Review
“Before every payments there will be a discussion of the finance ministers to see if the program is on track and whether the Greeks are still doing their part,” and “this is an incentive for the Greeks to make the necessary political decisions and a political and economical guarantee for the 16 donor countries --or how many that may be -- that their money is administered as safely as possible,” Wieser said.
The first payment under the new program will probably take place in September, and may be of a similar size to the 12 billion-euro July installment, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Zoe Schneeweiss in Vienna at
zschneeweiss@bloomberg.net
