BNP's Lemierre Says Few Bonds Held By Funds Seeking Greek Bankruptcy-Paper
02/22/2012 | 04:41am The number of Greek sovereign bonds recently purchased by independent funds remains limited said Jean Lemierre, a senior adviser to BNP Paribas SA (>> BNP PARIBAS), in an interview published Wednesday in French business daily Les Echos, brushing aside risks that few bondholders would take part in the agreement sealed Tuesday morning.
Asked whether there could be a risk that funds, for which a Greek default is in their best interest, could boycott the new deal negotiated by the Institute of International Finance, Lemierre, a key negotiator, said: "Those are not important volumes. We do not have the exact break-up of the debt by term, but 45% of the debt is held by Greek banks. The rest is mainly held by insurance firms, banks and pension funds."
Under the terms of the agreement, private Greek debt holders, represented by the IIF, will take losses of 53.5% against the nominal value of their bonds, reducing the country's debt by EUR107 billion. The overall percentage loss will be about 73%, after factoring in the sharply lower coupon being paid to investors on new Greek bonds they will swap for those they now hold, said Lemierre. The new bonds have longer maturities paying coupons starting from 2% annually until 2015 to 4.3% annually after 2020.
Newspaper website: www.lesechos.fr
-By Paris Bureau, Dow Jones Newswires, 33 1 4017 1756;
noemie.bisserbe@dowjones.com
