Alpha Bank’s bond issue an unqualified success

Alpha Bank’s bond issue was particularly successful on Thursday, with investors offering more than 2.3 billion euros against just 500 million euros that the lender was seeking, resulting in the issue being almost five times oversubscribed.

The bond yield was 2.75 percent, below previous issues, as well as lower than the current yield of the five-year sovereign bond. Consequently Alpha’s dependence on the emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) mechanism is reduced to less than 6 billion euros, from 7 billion at the end of December and 8 billion at end-September.