Greece debt swap: Hope grows ahead of deadline

"I'm optimistic that there's going to be an agreement in the next few hours," said Charles Dallara, the head of the bank group leading the debt swap talks.
Greece needs at least 75% of its bondholders to agree to take a cut in the value of their holdings by the deadline of 20:00 GMT on Thursday.
Greek officials said almost 60% had signed up already.
Stocks in Athens were up almost 4% - pulling other stock indexes higher as well - on hopes the swap will happen as planned.
Mr Dallara, head of the Institute of International Finance, also confirmed that more than 50% had already agreed to the deal.
Greece has said it wants 90% of bondholders, such as banks and pension funds, to agree to take a 53.5% cut in the 206bn euros ($272; £172bn) of Greek bonds they hold.
Without the deal, Greece will not receive another bailout.
So far, Germany's Munich Re, French banks Societe Generale and BNP Paribas and some pension funds have said they will sign up.

"The pace of responses to the bond offer is good, the percentage of bondholders tendering voluntarily is very high," a Greek government official told the Reuters news agency.
But some small pension funds have said they will not - and others are waiting to see what hedge funds will do.
One bondholder told the BBC that he had "no incentive" to accept the deal and would not do so.
"I'm not in the business for altruistic reasons," said Patrick Armstrong, managing partner at Armstrong Investment Managers. "Capital markets function best when people are out to deliver return on capital investment."
An announcement on the take-up of the swap will appear on the Greek government's bonds website at 06:00 GMT on Friday, the AFP news agency reported.