Greece says nearly 80% support debt swap More than 75 per cent of Greece's private bondholders have agreed to participate in the country's €260bn debt restructuring, allowing Athens to proceed with the world's largest ever sovereign default. The Greek government is expected to announce the results of the two-week campaign to win over private investors on Friday morning, but senior Greek officials and bankers briefed on the results said close to 80 per cent of debt in private hands agreed to be swapped for new bonds worth less than half current face value. "It will be good news tonight," one Greek cabinet minister told the FT just before Thursday night's deadline. Take-up will be around 80 per cent. The Greek government is now expected to trigger so-called "collective action clauses," introduced into bonds in recent law, to impose the 53.5 per cent loss on all holders of bonds issued under Greek law. In order to use the CACs, Athens needed 66 per cent of participants to agree the deal; by getting close to 80 per cent, the hurdle would be cleared safely. Once CACs are triggered, all €177bn in Greek-law bonds will be swapped for a cash payment equal to 15 per cent of the old bond and new Greek bonds worth 31.5 per cent - wiping about €100bn from Athens" €350bn debt pile. "This extraordinarily difficult deal ... allows Europe to avoid what could have been an enormously costly, disorderly default," said Charles Dallara, the chief negotiator for Greek bondholders. Signs that a deal was imminent included a move by the European Central Bank to begin accepting Greek bonds again as collateral from banks seeking cheap loans to run their day-to-day operations. The ECB stopped accepting the bonds in liquidity operations last week when Athens was declared in default, but a successful debt restructuring frees up €35bn in eurozone funds to back Greek bonds until the restructuring is complete, likely by the middle of next week. Despite the optimism, financial markets were already betting Greece would default again in the future. Grey market "when issued" pricing for the 20 new bonds were ranging from 17 to 28 cents on the euro, a highly distressed level, according to indicative quotes seen by the FT. The pricing equates to a yield on the new bonds of 17 to 21 per cent, about where Greek yields stood in the autumn, and far worse than the yield on Portugal, which has also received a bailout. In addition, the status of the 14 per cent of Greek debt not issued as Greek-law bonds, most of which are bonds governed by English law, remained unclear. According to a confidential analysis prepared for eurozone finance minsters last month, 95 per cent of all bondholders must be included in the debt restructuring for Greece debt to reach 120 per cent of economic output by 2020, the target of its new €130bn bailout. Greece cannot reach that target with Greek-law bonds alone, and Athens may need to wait until a meeting of foreign-law bondholders at the end of the month to know how many will join the restructuring. Additional reporting by Joseph Leahy in Rio de Janiero