Bond

Major investment firms kicked off the new year with a barrage of positive recommendations for Greek bonds ahead of the country's first market foray for 2024, expected soon, as well as the start of bond reissues planned by the Public Debt Management Agency.

In 2023, the BIST100 index remained below the performance of 2022 and inflation, but there is a premium of about 35 percent. The policy based on high-interest rates, which changed with the new economic management after the elections, mobilized alternative markets. Interest rates, foreign exchange and gold protected investors relatively from inflation compared to the stock market.

The yield of the Greek 10-year bond, the benchmark of the Greek debt market, has now dropped below 3%, at the lowest levels since April 2022, when the main interest rate of the European Central Bank was still at negative levels.

İşbank, the largest private lender by asset, has become the first bank to issue Turkish Lira-denominated green bonds in Türkiye.

In a filing with Borsa Istanbul, the bank said it completed the issuance of the 500 million lira nominal valued green bonds with 728 days of maturity.

Bonds with floating rates and quarterly coupon payments were sold to qualified investors.

The sooner Greece goes to the markets in 2024, the better, say analysts, stressing that demand for Greek bonds during next year's issues will be particularly strong.

The Eurosystem maintained its holdings of Cypriot bonds valued at 6.75 billion euros as of the end of November, data from the Central Bank of Cyprus have shown.

This stability is attributed to the European Central Bank's ongoing efforts to deleverage its balance sheet as a strategy to curb inflation.

The door is now wide open for the entry of quality and long-term investors, who manage trillions of dollars, into the Greek bonds market: Bloomberg Index Services, a global provider of government bond indices, has become the first to include Greek bonds among the elite of the debt markets, announcing that 17 Greek bonds worth 73 billion euros are to be included in its index series as of January

Greek bonds outperformed their eurozone counterparts considerably on Monday, with the 5-year Greek note even matching Spanish paper, having received a boost from Greece's upgrade by Fitch Ratings on Friday night.

The Public Debt Management Agency on Wednesday reopened Greece's 10-year bond that matures on June 15, 2033, raising 200 million euros and securing a rate of 3.76%, against a rate of 4.34% in the previous such auction four weeks earlier.

With total bids reaching €933 million, the bid-to-coverage ratio was 4.67, up from 3.79 on October 18.The settlement date is November 22. 

We were very late in succeeding, but, even now it is recognized that the sacrifices and reforms made in the last 10 years in Greece following the country's debt crisis have had a positive effect. That is why two international rating agencies have recently removed Greek bonds from the "junk" category and upgraded them to investment status.