Portugal sold six-month bills today, the first of Europe’s high-deficit nations to test investor demand in 2011 after the threat of default forced Greece and Ireland to seek bailouts last year.
The government debt agency, known as IGCP, auctioned 500 million euros ($665 million) of bills repayable in July. The yield jumped to 3.686 percent from 2.045 percent at a sale of similar maturity securities in September, with investors bidding for 2.6 times the amount offered. A year ago, the country paid just 0.592 percent to borrow for six months.
