Everyone wants to lend Greece – Offers reach 17 billion

The book building process starts officially early in the morning (at 11.00 local time) so as investors around the world will be able to participate and Greece hopes the book building process will stop within a few hours or minutes. But, this is a 'global' bond and applications have already submitted in the United States yesterday. Market investigation has already begun and will determine the interest rate and the amount of funds to be announced - perhaps more than 3 billion euros.

The first messages from the U.S. show that the issuing attracts high funds and according to information the amount will reach more than 13 or 17 billion euros (depending on the source and the time the information was released) from many different investors.

In any case, the Ministry of Finance does not want to find itself trapped in “prophecies” since the issuing is considered necessary and it is expected to have only a positive impact on the public debt and the economy in general.

The most important thing at this phase, however, is perhaps the fact that the new bond:

- might open the way for Greek banks to react quickly in the upcoming hours and days in order to seek private capitals from abroad. In that way, these could be invoiced easier and better than markets, based on the reference rate on which Greece managed to borrow now.

- gives Greece a chance to show everyone that the country has done everything to put in order all its internal issues and now can address directly both lenders and investors to request formally new active measures for the Greek debt relief.