The headlines are hitting the wire now. In all, EUR172 billion of the EUR206 billion in Greek bonds up for exchange have tendered for the swap--that's 83%, quite close to expectations.
And Greece will pull the collective-action clause trigger to force all the Greek-law bond holders into the exchange. That brings participation to 96%.
This is very much in line with expectations: Greece got a lot of Greek-law bondholders to submit voluntarily, but it was still tens of billions short of the whole lot. It's a reasonable assumption that many of the Greek-law holdouts were in the bond that matures on March 20 .
Greece simply doesn't have the money to pay them, and practically zero chance of the euro zone pulling together in the next week to front Greece the cash. In that very practical sense, invoking the collective-action clauses was a straightforward move. With CACs, those March 20 bonds (there's a total of EUR14.5 billion outstanding) are all swapped into bonds maturing in 2023 to 2042.
Of the foreign-law bonds, 69% tendered--meaning there are only a few billion in holdouts. The nearest-to-mature foreign-law bond is in May. It's a good bet Greece doesn't want to pay that, either.
Greece is playing hardball. The headline from our Dow Jones colleagues in Athens :
DJ Greek FinMin Warns of Onerous Terms For Holdouts In Bond Swap
Graciously, Greece is giving them two more weeks to change their minds.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has just said its panel will meet at 1 p.m. London time to determine whether credit-default swaps on Greece should be triggered. They shouldn't need long to sort that out. (Yes.)
