LONDON: British gilt futures fell on Monday as hopes for a Greek debt swap deal helped risk appetite, while this week's syndicated sale of 40-year gilts and some bond holders' willingness to sell short-dated gilts back to the Bank of England also weighed.
Germany and France pressed for a rapid deal between Greece and its private creditors that cuts its soaring debt to sustainable levels and said they were committed to a sealing a new bailout for Athens by March to avert a disastrous default.
The March gilt future settled 58 ticks down at 115.21 , outperforming the equivalent Bund by 10 ticks.
On the domestic front, the BoE bought only two of the 11 gilts on offer with a maturity of three to 10 years, worth 1.7 billion pounds, at a reverse auction on Monday.
"With the Bank having spent 1.6 billion out of their 1.7 billion on one bond, there must've been at least one person, possibly more, who was willing to sell to the Bank at a level below the market to make sure that they sold their bonds," said Sam Hill, strategist at RBC Capital Markets.
Hill added that investors had also failed to sell back to the BoE a lot of the other bonds, including recently auctioned ones, meaning that there were now "unsatisfied" sellers.
"It sends quite a weak signal about the state of the front end," he said.
This week Britain's Debt Management Office will sell around 4 billion pounds of gilts due 2052 via a syndicate of banks, with market participants eyeing Tuesday as the most likely day for the deal.
Lloyds strategist Vatsala Datta said the bonds, which are benchmark 40-year gilts, had cheapened around two weeks ago and were now trading broadly in line with the rest of the yield curve, meaning that the curve was flattening.
"It's the highest-yielding bond on the curve," she said. "So that's going to bring in some demand (at the sale)... It's a good opportunity to buy triple-A paper."
The BoE is due to buy 1.7 billion pounds' worth of gilts with a maturity of more than 25 years on Tuesday, which will also help boost demand at the syndicated sale if it takes place then, Datta added.
Hill added that the prospect of at least 50 billion pounds' worth in more quantitative easing asset purchases, widely expected in February, would lift appetite for gilts at the sale.
In the cash market, the yield on 10-year gilts was 5 basis points up at 2.17 percent, with the spread against Bunds widening by 1 basis point to 19 basis points.
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