Two days after Greece shelved plans to price its 7 year bond offering on Tuesday due to market conditions (not in Greece, mind you, but in the US where the VIX ETF industry had just gone bananas), on Thursday the thrice bailed out nation once again kicked off its long-awaited sale of a seven-year bond, and moments ago priced the more than twice oversubscribed offering some 25bps lower than initial price talk.
The eurobond offering, which was marketed with a 3.75% yield, just priced at 3.5% and was sized at €3 billion, or less than half the peak orderbook of €6.8 billion according to the lead managers.
Here are the final terms, via Bloomberg:
- Greece EU3b 7Y 3.5%; Guidance was 3.5%-3.625% vs IPT 3.75% area.
- Orderbook above EU6b (incl. EU320m JLM interest); orders peaked at more than EU6.8b: Leads
- Issuer: Hellenic Republic Government International Bond (GREECE)
- Issuer Ratings: Caa2/B/B-
- Format: Reg S CAT1, dematerialized, registered
- Size: EUR Benchmark
- Maturity: 7Y (Feb. 15, 2025)
- Coupon: Fixed, annual, act/act
- Joint bookrunners will be paid a fee in connection to the transaction
- Settlement: Feb. 15, 2018
- ISIN: GR0118017657
- Listing: Athens
- Law: English
- Bookrunners: Barclays, BNP, Citi (B&D), JPM, Nomura
After the third Greek bailout in the summer of 2015, the country’s July 2017 debt sale marked its first international bond issue since 2014, after a bout of brinkmanship over its 2015 bailout led it to be shunned by investors. Of course, with Greece offering some of the juiciest yields, backstopped by tens of billions of bonds held by the ECB, it was only a matter of time before investors came crawling back, begging for a piece of the action.
Incidentally, with the Greek 10Y trading at 3.786%, it is now less than 90bps away from the US 10Y Treasury at 2.878%, and at this rate, it is likely that the two may cross in the next few months.
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