Spanish treasury places €4.5bn euros on market

The Spanish treasury successfully placed on Tuesday treasury bills to the value of 4.5 billion euros (6.099 billion U.S. dollars). A total of 1.634 billion euros worth of treasury bills with a three-month lifespan carried an average interest rate of 0.405 percent, which is considerably above the 0.294 percent of the previous auction held on Oct. 22. The remaining 2.867 billion euros worth of treasury bills with a nine-month lifespan fetched an average interest rate of 0.662 percent, slightly below the 0.682 percent of the previous issue and the lowest interest rate in history for nine-month treasury bills. The treasury registered a high demand in the case of nine-month treasury bills, which helped lower their average interest rate. However, the low demand registered in the case of three-month treasury bills made the average interest rate rise. So far, the Spanish treasury has placed around 125.1 billion euros on the market, which represented 99.98 percent of the total amount predicted for the year, 121.3 billion euros. Tuesday's auction was the last one of the month. The Treasury will hold more auctions on Dec. 5, 10, 17 and 19 before 2013 ends. (1 euro=1.36 U.S. dollars)