The European Stability Mechanism to launch its inaugural long-term bond issue in October, 2013

Luxembourg, 02-9-2013 — /EuropaWire/ — The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will launch its inaugural long-term bond issue in October, subject to market conditions. Investor marketing activities are currently being held in preparation for this inaugural bond. The ESM successfully started its
bill programme in January 2013, which was taken over from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). The ESM long-term funding programme is scheduled to be €9 billion in 2013 and €17 billion in 2014. However, the actual yearly funding volume will depend on the programmes to be financed and the rollover of existing debt.

Klaus Regling, Managing Director of the ESM, said: “With this debut ESM bond we will start building a liquid bond curve offering an attractive investment opportunity in different maturities to a wide investor base. The ESM will apply the same diversified funding strategy as the EFSF, which consists of the use of a variety of instruments and maturities. The flexibility of this strategy to react to market needs and investor demand enabled the EFSF to establish an excellent and loyal investor base. For the ESM this investor base is expected to be even wider as the strong capital structure should attract additional investors.”

Alongside the ESM, the EFSF will remain very active in the long-term bond market in order to finance the ongoing programmes for Portugal, Ireland and Greece. This will continue beyond the end of these programmes as the existing EFSF bonds will have to be rolled over. Therefore, the ESM and EFSF, managed by the same team from Luxembourg, will both be active in the debt markets for the years to come.

About ESM
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is an inter-governmental institution which was inaugurated on 8 October 2012. Its mandate is to preserve financial stability of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union by providing financial assistance to euro area Member States in difficulty. In order to fulfil its mission, the ESM is authorised to issue bonds or other debt instruments on the market to raise funds needed to provide loans to countries in financial difficulties, intervene in the debt primary and secondary markets, act on the basis of a
precautionary programme and finance recapitalisations of financial institutions through loans to governments including in non-programme countries. All financial assistance to Member States is linked to appropriate conditionality. The shareholders of the ESM are the 17 euro area Member States. It has a total subscribed capital of €700 billion which comprises €80 billion in paid-in capital and €620 billion in committed callable capital. The ESM’s maximum lending capacity is €500 billion.

Media Enquiries
Wolfgang Proissl
Chief Spokesperson
Phone: +352 260 962 230
Mobile: +352 621 239 454
w.proissl@esm.europa.eu

Luis Rego
Deputy Spokesperson
Phone: +352 260 962 235
Mobile: +352 621 136 935
l.rego@esm.europa.eu