Dublin - Ireland made a storming return to the international bond market on Tuesday, with bumper demand for the country's first debt sale since exiting its EU/IMF bailout helping to drive down yields across the euro zone's periphery.
Investors bid more than €14bn for the new 10-year bond sold via syndication, nearly four times the size of the final €3.75bn issue, the country's NTMA debt agency said.
Reputation
The bond - the first Dublin has sold since last March - was priced at mid-swaps plus 140 basis points, giving a yield of just over 3.5% and marked a substantial step towards a target of raising between €6bn to €10bn this year.
"This sale shows that Ireland has fully exited the EU/IMF (bailout)," Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in a statement.
"The yield of 3.54% illustrates the strength of Ireland's international reputation and brings us far closer to the borrowing rates of the strongest European economies."
Ireland's cost of borrowing over 10 years has tumbled from a peak of about 15%, hit in 2011 as the euro zone's debt crisis intensified.