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Germany Wants to Revive Proposal for Greek Bond Swap Lengthening Maturity
By Rainer Buergin - Jul 6, 2011 10:50 AM GMT+0200 Wed Jul 06 08:50:28 GMT 2011
Germany will revive a proposal for a Greek bond swap that would involve a voluntary exchange of debt against bonds with a longer maturity, a government official said.
Discussions on a bond swap have become possible again after rating companies indicated that the French model to roll over debt would create a so-called rating event, the official said by phone in Berlin today on condition of anonymity because negotiations on Greek debt are private. While a bond swap might create a rating event, the German government sees it as limited to a very short time, the official said.
The German move breathes fresh life into a proposal outlined by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a June 6 letter addressed to European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, the International Monetary Fund’s then-acting chief, John Lipsky, and fellow euro-area finance ministers. In it, Schaeuble said maturities on Greek bonds should be extended by seven years to give the debt-wracked nation time to overhaul its economy.
Reviving the plan risks setting Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government back on a collision course with Trichet as Merkel and Schaeuble strive to fulfill a commitment to enroll banks in a second aid package for Greece. Trichet said last month that pushing private-sector involvement would be an “enormous mistake” for the euro region.
Schaeuble, in a speech in Berlin last night, said that he agreed “100 percent” with his predecessor in Merkel’s first- term government, Peer Steinbrueck, who said when he was still in office that all political decisions should be taken in agreement with the ECB.
German Bank Rollover
German banks and insurers including Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Allianz SE (ALV) agreed in principle last week to contribute to a debt rollover for Greece based on the French model that aims to contribute a total of about 30 billion euros ($43 billion) to the second Greek bailout.
That plan was thrown into disarray on July 4 when Standard & Poor’s said the debt rollover might temporarily place the country in “selective default.”
Even so, a declaration of selective default may cause limited harm as long as the ECB keeps accepting the debt as collateral, HSBC Holdings Plc said the same day.
The S&P view means there is no longer any reason not to discuss the bond swap idea, the German official said.
Merkel warned yesterday against too much weight being placed on the ratings companies, saying that the so-called troika of the IMF, ECB and European Commission mustn’t “surrender our ability to make judgements.”
“I place my trust above all in the assessments of these three institutions,” she told reporters in Berlin yesterday.
(Bloomberg)
By Rainer Buergin - Jul 6, 2011 10:50 AM GMT+0200 Wed Jul 06 08:50:28 GMT 2011
Germany will revive a proposal for a Greek bond swap that would involve a voluntary exchange of debt against bonds with a longer maturity, a government official said.
Discussions on a bond swap have become possible again after rating companies indicated that the French model to roll over debt would create a so-called rating event, the official said by phone in Berlin today on condition of anonymity because negotiations on Greek debt are private. While a bond swap might create a rating event, the German government sees it as limited to a very short time, the official said.
The German move breathes fresh life into a proposal outlined by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a June 6 letter addressed to European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, the International Monetary Fund’s then-acting chief, John Lipsky, and fellow euro-area finance ministers. In it, Schaeuble said maturities on Greek bonds should be extended by seven years to give the debt-wracked nation time to overhaul its economy.
Reviving the plan risks setting Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government back on a collision course with Trichet as Merkel and Schaeuble strive to fulfill a commitment to enroll banks in a second aid package for Greece. Trichet said last month that pushing private-sector involvement would be an “enormous mistake” for the euro region.
Schaeuble, in a speech in Berlin last night, said that he agreed “100 percent” with his predecessor in Merkel’s first- term government, Peer Steinbrueck, who said when he was still in office that all political decisions should be taken in agreement with the ECB.
German Bank Rollover
German banks and insurers including Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Allianz SE (ALV) agreed in principle last week to contribute to a debt rollover for Greece based on the French model that aims to contribute a total of about 30 billion euros ($43 billion) to the second Greek bailout.
That plan was thrown into disarray on July 4 when Standard & Poor’s said the debt rollover might temporarily place the country in “selective default.”
Even so, a declaration of selective default may cause limited harm as long as the ECB keeps accepting the debt as collateral, HSBC Holdings Plc said the same day.
The S&P view means there is no longer any reason not to discuss the bond swap idea, the German official said.
Merkel warned yesterday against too much weight being placed on the ratings companies, saying that the so-called troika of the IMF, ECB and European Commission mustn’t “surrender our ability to make judgements.”
“I place my trust above all in the assessments of these three institutions,” she told reporters in Berlin yesterday.
(Bloomberg)