By George Matlock
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - This year's euro zone government bond supply will be uncorked when the German "Sylvester Bond" (Sylvester is German for New Year's Eve) is issued on Wednesday, but investors expect it to be rather sobering.
Economists are bracing themselves for issuance of around 770-870 billion euros of bonds in the euro zone in 2009 and made more complicated by new state-guaranteed banking bonds filling the gap of a dearth of corporate debt issuance.
While the first quarter of a new year has typically been a time to front load supply, this time it looks much less likely because of the sheer quantity of issuance involved as governments fund their bank and economic bailout schemes.
That is why analysts are expecting around 10 percent of the year's supply to be raised in January.
"Gross issuance in January is 86 billion euros, which is heavy from a large number of syndicated new issues, but this is counterbalanced by 73 billion euros in redemption and 26 billion euros in coupon payments," said Wilson Chin, a bond analyst at ING Financial in Amsterdam.
While in net terms investors will see an 13 billion euros cash surplus in January, things get heavier later in the first quarter.
"February and March will be heavier though as coupon and redemption flows will be considerably lower," Chin added.
For this week, cash flows into the market will outweigh the outgoings caused by debt supply.
A total of 13.8 billion euros of coupons and 14.5 billion euros of redemptions of maturing bonds is expected, causing an outflow of 28.3 billion euros.
Meanwhile, debt supply will be lower at up to 19.5 billion euros this week. But that only includes the scheduled auctions.
"If you add to that the Irish five-year bond announced this week as a syndicated sale and the Austrian five-year syndication announced in December, you will have more like 10 billion euros on top, making this week a 1 billion euros shortfall," said David Schnautz, bond analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
Schnautz said Ireland could open books as soon as this week, although Austria might wait until next week.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is locked in talks this week with one of her coalition government partners to thrash out an agreement on tax cuts as part of a second economic stimulus package which could be worth 50 billion euros and come on top of a 31 billion euros plan agreed last year.
She reached consensus with another coalition partner at the weekend for tax cuts in the second package. [ID:nL4656939]
"But we don't think that will add 50 billion euros to longer-dated bond supply," said ING's Chin. "They could finance with Treasury bills, Bubills, at least for now."
SHORT WEEK LONG ON SUPPLY
This week's supply compressed into Wednesday and Thursday.
Euro zone debt supply traditionally opens the year with
Germany's Sylvester Bond, which this time will be the reopening
on Wednesday of the 3.75 percent January 2019 Bund, the currency
bloc's 10-year benchmark bond
Germany will issue 6 billion euros of the debt, although key performance measures will be the total bids as a proportion of the amount sold and the amount retained by the Bundesbank as agent to the issuer. The bid premium or discount and the elasticity of bids as measured by the so-called "tail" will also be factors closely watched.
"We think (the Bund auction) may go well because cash flows look at worst neutral this week and at best positive and if the euro continues to weaken this will spur bargain hunters rather than hamper Bund buying as investors will reckon the currency will rise again soon," said a trader in London.
On Thursday, France will issue up to 7 billion euros of reopened 4.5 percent Oct 2018, 4.5 percent Oct 2023 and 4.0 percent Oct 2038 OATs while Spain will issue up to 6.5 billion euros of new 2.75 percent April 2012 and reopened 4.25 percent Jan 2014 Bonos. (Reporting by George Matlock; editing by Chris Pizzey)