Investors reject forced losses for 5 Greek foreign-law bonds

Only two bondholder groups out of 12 that voted on foreign-law Greek bonds included in a debt swap plan decided to enforce the exchange on holdouts, debt agency data showed on Thursday.

Five assemblies did not reach the required quorum and another five voted against forcing losses with so-called collective action clauses.

These votes, held at bondholders' meetings on March 27 on bonds issued by Hellenic Railways and other Greek public transport companies, were part of a lengthy process to swap Greek government bonds to cut the country's debt mountain. More bondholders' meetings have yet to take place.

On March 12, Athens swapped a nominal amount of 177 billion euros ($235.21 billion) of government paper issued under domestic law for new securities, inflicting real losses of about 74% on private-sector bondholders.

Greece has extended the deadline to April 4 for holders of foreign law bonds and government guaranteed bonds of state enterprises to take part in the swap.

Out of a nominal 28.3 billion euros of bonds in this pool of eligible securities in the overall swap, 20 billion has already been tendered for exchange.