Greece sells €4 billion of bills

Greece sold €4.06 billion of Treasury bills as euro-area finance chiefs delayed paying the nation's next bailout tranche, leaving…

Greece sold €4.06 billion of Treasury bills as euro-area finance chiefs delayed paying the nation's next bailout tranche, leaving it needing to roll over securities that mature on November 16.

Greece sold €1.3 billion of 13-week bills to yield 4.2 per cent, and €2.76 billion of four-week bills to yield 3.95 per cent.

Investors requested 1.66 times the amount of 13-week bills sold, compared with 1.9 times previously.

The so-called bid-to-cover ratio was 1.3 times for the four-week bills, the Athens-based Public Debt Management Agency said.

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Second-day bids tomorrow may bring the total sold to €5 billion, the amount of a 13-week bill redemption that Greece is due to meet on November 16.

That auction, in August, was to cover the cost of redeeming government bonds held by the European Central Bank.

Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker said yesterday he had called for a November 20 special meeting of finance minsters to make a "definite decision" on releasing the next tranche of loans, worth €31.5 billion, from Greece's bailout.

The tranche has been frozen since June as prime minister Antonis Samaras's coalition government and its creditors haggled over austerity measures linked to the bailout.

Bloomberg