* Greece to issue seven-year bond "in the near future"
* Bankers say it aims to raise about 2 bln euros
* Greece could open books on Tuesday, the earliest - sources (Adds details)By Lefteris PapadimasATHENS, July 15 (Reuters) - Greece plans to issue aseven-year bond"in the near future", authorities said onMonday, hoping to take advantage of record- low borrowing costs.The market foray would be the country's third since itemerged from international bailouts last year. Since then, yields of Greek bonds have dropped to recordlows. The yield of the seven-year bond has fallen to1.56% from about 4% at the beginning of the year.Authorities did not provide any details on the amountsought.
Two bankers with knowledge of the issue said that Greeceaimed to raise "about 2 billion euros" and that it would openthe books for the issue in the coming days, probably on Tuesday."Greek yields are the euro zone's most attractive and thepolitical risk is very low," said a senior fixed-income trader. The announcement on the upcoming bond issue came a weekafter a snap election which conservatives won with a commandinglead over leftists, on a platform of investments, jobs, tax cutsand security. Greece currently has a cash buffer of 34 billion euros($38.33 billion) from unused loans and money raised from marketsand can service its debt obligations for more than two years.It has issued two bonds this year, a five-year bond inJanuary and a 10-year bond in March, raising about 5 billioneuros ($5.64 billion) from markets out of 7.5 billion aimed forthis year.
Greece plans to use a small part of its buffer to pay offearlier expensive International Monetary Fund loans.Greece has mandated Barclays, BofA Merrill Lynch, DeutscheBank, Morgan Stanley, Nomura and Soci?(C)t?(C) G?(C)n?(C)rale as joint leadmanagers for the upcoming transaction, according to a regulatoryfiling to the Athens stock exchange.
($1 = 0.8870 euros) (Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou, writing by ReneeMaltezou,editing by Larry King)
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