The official confirmation has arrived: Greece has collected 85,8% of subscriptions to the swap plan. Athens announced this morning that the subscriptions received concerned bonds for a total of 172 billion, of which 152 billion under Greek law and the remaining 20 from holders who are not subject to Greek law. The swap operation on the 206 billion euro debt was therefore closed successfully, exceeding the threshold which allows for the restructuring of the debt (75%).
It should be remembered though that at this level Athens can use collective action clauses and this could trigger the payment of CDS. In fact, the Greek government added in the note that "with the activation of the collective action clauses (Cac) membership can come to an acceptance rate of 95,7% ”. But the ball is now in the hands of the Eurogroup, which is meeting today in Brussels, and which will have to decide whether or not to trigger these clauses and whether or not to hand out the first 97 billion tranche of the 130 billion aid plan approved last week.
Greece has informed its international partners of its intention to trigger the CAC clauses on outstanding Greek-law bonds not yet delivered to the swap. It comes then the deadline for accepting the swap for non-Greek bonds and those issued by state-owned companies was extended to 23 March.
Meanwhile, yesterday the ECB announced that it had resumed accepting Greek government bonds as collateral in bank financing operations, an operation which had been suspended at the end of February.
