Europe;

摘要

Despite a generally improving growth picture in the Eurozone in the last few months, tensions on sovereign bond markets have remained high. Portuguese and Spanish debt spreads have widened notably in recent weeks to around 400bp and 250bp over German bunds respectively, and the Irish bailout package has done little to reduce spreads there, which remain more than 600bp over bunds. This spread widening has taken place despite an increase in outright bond purchases by the ECB of around €11 billion over the last two months.