por admin » Mar Ene 11, 2011 8:40 am
La deuda Europea se vende con facilidad
Italia, Grecia vieron pagaron intereses marginalmente mas altos, los de Hungary se redujeron.
Estas son buenas noticias para Portugal, Espania e Italia quienes subastaran bonos en los proximos dos dias.
Europe Debt Sales Pass Smoothly
By EMESE BARTHA
The European Union's weaker states comfortably sold planned amounts of Treasury bills Tuesday, with Italy and Greece paying only marginally higher yields than previously, while Hungary's funding costs actually dipped.
The smooth outcome of the T-bill tenders, or sales of short-term debt, is good news ahead of Portuguese, Spanish and Italian government bond sales in the next two days, but market participants remain cautious.
The outcome of Tuesday's short-term debt sales only gives a partial indication of how this week's government bond tenders will go because T-bill sales tend to attract more domestic investors, rather than international ones, and there are also different country-specific risks to consider. However, there was more interest than usual from international investors at Tuesday's T-bill sales.
"There was robust interest from overseas investors who accounted for 37% of the final T-bill auctioned amount," said Petros Christodoulou, chief of the Greek Public Debt Management Agency, or PDMA.
Greece, which returned to its monthly T-bill auctions after taking a breather in December, sold €1.95 billion ($2.53 billion) of 26-week T-bills at a uniform yield of 4.9%, compared with 4.82% in November. The amount sold includes a 30% noncompetitive tranche above the €1.5 billion auction size. The bid-to-cover ratio, which shows how demand compares with the amount sold, was 3.4, compared with 5.15 previously but the €1.5 billion offer size was five times the previous volume of €300 million, hence analysts said the ratio was a "reasonable."
Other senior PDMA officials speaking on condition of anonymity said they were very pleased that the yield was below 5%, given the volatility of European bond markets.
"It is positive that the yield came in below 5%, and remains below the average borrowing rate of about 5.2% on Greece's from the €110 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union," said a senior local trader at a blue-chip Greek bank. "Overall the auction was slightly ahead of market expectations and may help soothe nerves on the cash bond market," he said.
Italy sold a planned €7 billion of 12-month Treasury bills at an average yield of 2.067%, compared with 2.014% at the previous auction on Dec. 10. The bid-to-cover ratio, was 1.63, compared with 2.0 previously, but at its previous sale, Italy only offered €4 billion of T-bills.
"The Italian auction posted a good result both in terms of demand and in terms of pricing, in line with our expectations," said Giuseppe Maraffino, a strategist at Barclays Capital in London, adding that it was priced broadly in line with the secondary market, while the overall price concession was very low, around 0.005 percentage point.
"Demand came from domestic and international investors, thus confirming that the interest for the Italian paper is high due to the higher liquidity of its bills and bonds market, and Italy's better fiscal outlook with respect to the other peripheral issuers," he added.
Hungary, which isn't a member of the euro zone, sold a more-than-planned 45 billion forints ($208.6 million) of three-month T-bills at its weekly auction, with the average yield falling dipping to 5.71% from 5.72% a week ago.
Among the stronger issuers of the European debt market, the Netherlands sold €3.25 billion of a new three-year bond, DSL 1% January 2014 at an average yield of 1.297%, compared with a target range of €2.5 billion to €3.5 billion.
"The new paper was well absorbed despite the relative richness of the Dutch debt as market investors seem quite keen on AAA debt at the moment," said Annalisa Piazza, an economist at Newedge in London.
Germany, meanwhile, set a 2% coupon, as expected, on a new five-year federal note, or bobl, maturing February 2016 and to be auctioned Wednesday.