Lebanon’s political stalemate, security uprisings and external headwinds from the Syrian war kept on clouding the bonds market performance in 2013. Besides local and regional developments, an international bearish trend driven by the United States (US) Treasuries also impacted safe assets trading in Lebanon over the year. Hence the BLOM Bond Index (BBI) mirrored the market’s negative performance and shed 3.13% year-on-year (y-o-y) compared to the 1.79% yearly loss recorded in 2012.
The BBI moved in seesaws over the year, hovering between a lower band of 102 points and a higher band of 111 points to end the year near the middle band at 105.64 points. Summing up the year, slowing demand characterized the Lebanese market especially during Feb-August, leading the weighted average yield on holding the Eurobonds to surge by 143 basis points (bps) to 6.45%. However, the latterdeclined in the following 4 months 83 bps to end the year at 5.62%…
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