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Portugal buys back over 1bn euros in bonds

Published February 25, 2016 Updated February 25, 2016 12:40pm

LISBON: Portugal bought back over 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in three bond maturities on Wednesday, slightly alleviating mounting redemptions over the coming three years in an attempt to improve investor confidence after a spike in its bond yields earlier this month.

The IGCP debt agency said it repurchased 349 million euros of bonds maturing in October 2017, 150 million euros of June 2018 bonds and 576 million euros of June 2019 government debt in a reverse auction.

The average price on the shortest maturity was 106.48 percent, 108.15 percent on the 2018 bond and 110.39 percent on the longest maturity.

Offers to sell the bonds outstripped the amount repurchased by 2.2 times, 3.1 times and 2.3 times, respectively.

The announcement of the auction, coupled with the initial approval of this year's budget in parliament on Tuesday, helped to push Portuguese bond yields lower on Wednesday and Thursday.

The outstanding debt of the three bonds now totals nearly 27.3 billion euros, the largest being the 2019 bond with over 10.3 billion outstanding.

Copyright Reuters, 2016