About 83 percent of Greece's private creditors agreed to cash in their bonds for new ones with less than half the face value, UPI quoted the Greek government as saying Friday. The overwhelming approval means Greece will go ahead with its landmark debt-restructuring deal, officials said. Athens plans to invoke so-called collective-action clauses that will impose the exchange on virtually all unwilling creditors, bringing the approval rate to 96 percent, officials said. Greece will consult with its eurozone rescuers before invoking the collective-action clauses in a teleconference of eurozone finance ministers at 2 p.m. Brussels time (8 a.m. EST) Friday. About $273 billion in bonds would be exchanged, slicing about $133 billion from the amount Greece owes. Most Asian stock indexes were up 1 percent to 2 percent Friday on the news. The Tokyo Stock Exchange's Nikkei 225 stock average broke above 10,000 for the first time since Aug. 1, 2011, before retreating to just below the 10,000 mark. As the deal stands, private-sector creditors -- creditors that agreed in October to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their bonds -- will take a "voluntary" 53.5 percent face-value loss, based on an arrangement worked out last month. New Greek bonds will be issued for trading Monday. Bondholders who submit to the swap, voluntarily or otherwise, will get cash or high-quality short-term bonds issued by the eurozone rescue fund valued at 15 percent of the face value of whatever they exchange, plus a series of Greek bonds maturing over the next 11 to 30 years valued at 31.5 percent, The Wall Street Journal said. Those two percentages add up to 46.5 percent, or a 53.5 percent face-value loss. The European Union and the IMF demanded completion of the swap before providing $173 billion in new loans to Greece, helping it to avoid defaulting on its remaining debts. Greece's major public-sector creditors are not affected by the restructuring. Those creditors include other eurozone nations, which lent Greece $70 billion, the International Monetary Fund, which lent $27 billion, and the European Central Bank and other national central banks, which bought more than $66 billion of Greek bonds.
