Portugal slips into default territory
By David Oakley and Robin Wigglesworth
18/01/12
Portugal is trading in default territory after investors offloaded the country’s bonds this week amid rising fears of contagion, hurting a government debt auction on Wednesday. Worries are mounting that the private sector and Greece will fail to agree a restructuring package for Athens’ debt.
Portuguese 10-year bond yields, which have an inverse relationship with prices, jumped to a new euro-era high of 14.40 per cent in London on Wednesday. Before the S&P two-notch downgrade late on Friday, yields were trading at 12.45 per cent.
Portugal on Wednesday sold €1.25bn of 11-month bills, €754m of six-month notes and €496m of three-month notes, lower than the €2bn to €2.5bn targeted by the government debt agency.
Portugal does not have a bond maturing until June, when €10bn is due for repayment. Its borrowing needs are also modest at €17.5bn. However, investors worry about Portugal’s painfully slow growth, which could impact on its ability to service its debts.
Many investors were forced to sell Portuguese bonds after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country to junk on Friday. Other funds sold Portuguese debt after Lisbon was removed from Citigroup’s European Bond Index, which these investors track, because of its fall to junk status.
All three main credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch, rate Portugal as junk, below investment grade. In the eurozone, only Greece is also rated junk by all the agencies.
The markets are pricing in a 65 per cent chance that Portugal will default over the next five years, according to credit default swaps. These instruments, which protect some investors from default, while others use them as a speculative device, leapt to record highs this week.
Portuguese bond prices have slumped to levels considered by many investors to be in default territory. Bond prices for benchmark 10-year debt were trading at slightly over 50 per cent of par on Wednesday morning, recovering from levels below 50 per cent on Monday.
Elisabeth Afseth, fixed-income analyst at Investec Capital Markets, said: “The growing worry that Greece will default is now hitting Portugal because of contagion fears. If Greece defaults, then the worry is so will Portugal. We have seen how quickly this crisis can spread.”
Fitch warned on Tuesday that Greece was likely to default in March when Athens is due to pay €14.5bn in bonds.
Edward Parker, managing director at Fitch, said on Wednesday that the rating agency was likely to downgrade all six eurozone nations it placed on review in December – Spain, Italy, Ireland, Cyprus, Belgium and Slovenia – by one or two notches.
Italian and Spanish borrowing costs edged up again on Wednesday morning but remain significantly lower than the highs touched at the peak of the market turmoil late last year.
Greek debt swap negotiations with private bondholders will resume in Athens on Wednesday, the Institute of International Finance said on Tuesday after talks were suspended last week.
The IIF said its managing director and co-chairman of the private investor creditor steering committee for Greece, Charles Dallara, and Jean Lemierre, special adviser to the chairman, would resume discussions with the Greek government.
Many investors fear the talks will fail, increasing the chance that Greece will default on March 20 when the bond repayments are due.
Bruce Richards, chief executive of Marathon Asset Management, one of the 32-member private creditor group negotiating with Greece, told Bloomberg that Greece would not be able to make the March 20 payment.
He expected, however, that creditors would agree to a restructuring deal for cash and securities with a market value of about 32 cents per euro of government debt before the payment is due.