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However, the two major negative limitations of this form of restructuring if applied to Greek sovereign debt restructuring are –
- It solves only the liquidity side of the problem which means that the refinancing of the huge debt (expected to reach 133% of GDP by the end of 2010) will be spread over a longer time period while the debt itself will continue to remain at such high levels. The sustainability of such high debt level, which is growing continuously owing to the snowball effect and the primary deficit, is and will continue to be highly questionable. Greek public finances are burdened by a very large interest expense which is approaching 7% of GDP. The government’s revenues are sagging and the drastic austerity measures need to first bridge the huge primary deficit (which was 8.6% of GDP in 2009), before generating funds to cover the interest expenditure and reduce debt.
Thus, even though the amount of funds required each year to refinance the maturing debt will be reduced by extending maturities, the solvency and sustainability issues surrounding Greece’s public finances, which were the primary reasons for it’s being ostracized from the market in the first place, will remain unanswered.
- It will lead to decline in present value of cash flows for the creditors since the average coupon rate is lower than the cost of capital (reflected by the yields on the Greek bonds). The average coupon rate for bonds maturing between 2010 and 2020 is about 4.4% while the average benchmark yield for bonds with maturities from 1-10 years is nearly 7.5%. Also, as the maturity of the debt is extended, the risk increases and so does the cost of capital.
In order to assess the effectiveness of this form of restructuring for Greek sovereign debt, we have built three scenarios in which the maturities of the Greek debt is extended. These scenarios weren’t designed to be exact predictions of the future but to represent what may happen under a variety of highly likely scenarios (a pessimistic, base and optimistic case, so to say):
- Restructuring 1 – Under this scenario, we assumed that the creditors with debt maturing between 2010 and 2020 will exchange their existing debt securities with new debt securities having same coupon rate but double the maturity.
- Restructuring 2 – Under this scenario, we assumed that the creditors with debt maturing between 2010 and 2020 will exchange their existing debt securities with new debt securities having half the coupon rate but double the maturity.
- Restructuring 3 – Under this scenario, the debt maturing between 2010 and 2020 will be rolled up into one bundle and exchanged against a single, self-amortizing 20-year bond with coupon equal to average coupon rate of the converted bonds.
In all the three scenarios, we computed the total funding requirements and compared the same with funding requirements prior to restructuring. It is observed that restructuring will help in easing the immediate pressure of procuring funds to meet the huge funding requirements lined up in the next 5 years. However, it will also lead to substantial loss to creditors in the form of erosion of present value of cash flows. (Discount rate was the benchmark yields of Greek government bonds for similar maturity period).
Professional and Institutional level subscribers (click here to upgrade) may access the live spreadsheet behind the document by clicking here (scroll down after for full summary, spreadsheet and charts).
We will be running similar restructuring analysis for all of the PIIGS member that we have researched in the Pan-European Sovereign Debt Crisis series.
