UPDATE 1-German, Irish, Belgian, Slovak CDS at record high
By: AFX | 12 Feb 2009 | 06:38 AM ET Text Size
By George Matlock LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The cost of protecting German, Irish, Belgian and Slovak government debt against default rose to a record high on Thursday, according to monitor CMA DataVision. Five-year credit default swaps (CDS) on German government debt climbed to a record 63.9 basis points from 62.3 basis points at the New York close on Wednesday, while the Irish equivalent broke above 300 basis points on Thursday, to a record high of 308.2 bps, CMA said. Belgian 5-year CDS shot up to a record high of 134.3 bps from 125.2 in New York on Wednesday, while Slovakia's 5-year CDS hit 237.5 bps from 233.5 bps. This means it would cost 63,900 euros to protect 10 million euros worth of German government bonds and 308,200 euros to protect 10 million euros of Irish government bonds. CMA said that Germany's risk of default over the course of the next five years had edged up as the CDS rate rose, such that there was a Cumulative Probability of Default (CPD) of 5.3 percent compared with 5.2 percent on Wednesday. The comparable CPD for Ireland was 22.8 percent, up from 21.1 percent on Wednesday; CPD on Belgium was 10.7 percent, up from 9.3 percent, and for Slovakia was 18.7 percent, up from 17.8 percent. "It is going to be a very, very busy day in the sovereign markets. We are seeing big moves and high volatility across the board," said one trader in London. Investors, fretting about the scale of financial rescue programmes to tackle recession, have been repricing risk of sovereign debt. CDS reflect bond investors' concern that major sovereign bonds' credit quality may slip in the future and comes after Moody's Investor Services placed Ireland and Spain in a "vulnerable" category in a report on triple-A rated nations earlier on Thursday. The category does not constitute a change in the rating or outlook for the countries but is a test of financial stress and attached risks. Investors, fretting about the scale of financial rescue programmes to tackle recession and about the prospects of their success, have been repricing risk of sovereign debt. "The moves in CDS rates are symptomatic of a problem going back 18 months," said Meyrick Chapman, strategist at UBS in London. "Belgium is leading this, with its banking and political-constitutional problems and explains why peripheral nations are wider. The tightening we have recently seen was in our view too far, too fast." (Editing by Stephen Nisbet) (george.matlock@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging:
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