In Brief
Greece may pre-fund some 2010 borrowing LONDON (Reuters) – Greece has completed its new borrowing program for 2009, but may take advantage of robust demand and tighter credit spreads to pre-fund some of 2010’s requirement, the head of the Public Debt Management Agency said yesterday. «If the opportunity arises and we have decided to do some pre-funding, we will do it,» Spyros Papanicolaou told Reuters Television in an interview. «The one caveat – we do expect that spreads are going to tighten even further so the question is whether we should rush to pre-fund, or wait until spreads come back to [lower] levels,» he said. Tapping the longer end of the credit curve as well as issuing in US dollars and Japanese yen were all options, the debt agency chief added. «We do not exclude the possibility to tap the longer end of the curve – maybe the 15-year – if we need it,» he said, speaking on the sidelines of the annual Euromoney Global Borrowers and Investors Forum in London. Tsamaz appointed Cosmote’s new CEO Greece’s largest mobile phone company, Cosmote, said yesterday deputy CEO Michael Tsamaz has been appointed CEO. Panagis Vourloumis was reappointed as chairman and Deutsche Telekom’s Kevin Copp was also appointed to the board, the company said in a statement. The board’s term expires on June 2012. Cosmote’s parent company, OTE, is scheduled to hold its annual general shareholders’ meeting today. Cyprus deficit Cyprus’s projected deficit this year and next will not exceed the eurozone threshold of 3 percent of gross domestic product, with the shortfall a «conscious policy» to spur economic growth, Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis said yesterday. «We expect a deficit this year. The level is difficult to predict, but this deficit was created consciously to tone the economy,» Stavrakis said. «The deficit will not exceed 3 percent and the budget for 2010 will certainly [foresee] less than 3 percent,» he told reporters. (Reuters) Confidence rises The Turkish manufacturers’ confidence index rose to 99.4 in June versus 96.9 percent the previous month, the central bank in Ankara said on its website. The level in June was the highest since May 2008. (Bloomberg) Orange output European Union orange output may rise 10 percent in the year starting in November as harvest gains in Italy and Greece outpace a decline in Spain, the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service said. The EU orange crop may reach 6.785 million metric tons in the coming year, up from 6.162 million tons in the year through October, according to a report posted yesterday on the USDA’s website. The crop in Spain, the region’s biggest producer, may fall 5 percent. (Bloomberg) Pipeline signature European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said he hopes an inter-government agreement including Turkey will be signed on the proposed Nabucco natural gas pipeline this July. The pipeline, which would bring gas to Europe via Turkey, has faced delays because of lack of commitments from customers and suppliers. (Bloomberg)
