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24 hours before the end of the term for submission of applications for voluntary participation of private creditors in the cutting of the Greek foreign debt, the picture still remains unclear. Companies that have announced so far their voluntary participation in reduction of the face value of the Greek bonds they hold are: Ageas, Allianz, Alpha Bank, AXA, Banque Postale, BBVA, BNP Paribas, CNP Assurances, Commerzbank, Credit Agricole, Credit Foncier, DekaBank, Deutsche Bank, Dexia, Emporiki Bank of Greece, Eurobank EFG, Generali, Greylock Capital Management, Groupama, HSBC, ING, Intesa San Paolo, KBC, Marfin Popular Bank, Metlife, National Bank of Greece, Piraeus Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Societe Generale, Unicredit.

The bonds they hold are worth 81 billion euro and correspond to 39.3% of the total amount of 206 billion euro in Greek debt held by private investors. In other words, currently Greece doesn’t even have a quota of 66% voluntary participation of lenders to trigger the rescue mechanism of the collective action clause CACs, through which it can require the remaining 34 percent to accept the exchange of bonds for new ones with lower value. With the bonds held by the Greek social security funds and banks they reach 49.4%, which still remains insufficient. Social funds that have announced they will participate in this process are the Social insurance fund (IKA), the fund of the farmers (OGA), the health insurance fund of civil servants (OPAD) and the Equity fund of political officials.

Meanwhile, Patrick Armstrong, who is a managing partner at Armstrong Investment Management in London told Bloomberg, that his company would not join voluntarily in the swap transaction. His company owns Greek bonds maturing on 20^th March and he says that although it is minuscule there is still a chance to receive their net value after about two weeks. "I do fully expect to be part of the collective action clause, which will include us as well", he said. It seems that from the Greek side the supplementary pensions security fund for civil servants will not participate in the PSI. Members of the union of state administration officials sabotaged for the second day in a row the meeting of the organization, at which a decision had to be taken regarding the voluntary participation in the process, but it seems that the result will be negative.

The result of the Greek debt reduction through the PSI programme remains uncertain also according to the statement of the representative of the International Financial Institute Jean Lemier before the French newspaper Le Monde. He believes that the success of the transaction would be in the best interest of all parties involved in the process, but he is certain that the participation of private creditors in the rescue programme must not lose its voluntary nature. At the same time, some information was released that stock markets in Milan and Stuttgart have ceased to trade Greek bonds and the Finnish Eurosceptics have requested a copy of the Greek contract for guarantees to make sure that they will get their money back in the event of an uncontrolled bankruptcy of the country. Executive Director of the Greek Investment Bank KFW Ulrich Schroeder expressed his concerns that the Greek PSI will not be able to gather even 60% volunteers from its private creditors in order to reduce its debt. In this case, uncontrolled bankruptcy is the most probable way out by causing a credit event. The losses from the ineffective PSI can be covered by Europe and the International Monetary Fund, but there is no official information about this yet.