Greece's Public Debt agency chief said a new 10-year bond was already oversubscribed within an hour of the book opening, with 7 (b) billion euro (9.5 billion US dollars) in offers received. The government was seeking a maximum of 5 (b) billion euro (6.8 billion US dollars).
The sale will be watched closely by financial markets to gauge the depth of Greece's debt crisis. The announcement of the issue comes a day after debt-ridden Greece detailed a whole new round of austerity measures, including salary cuts for civil servants, pension freezes and tax hikes on cigarettes, alcohol, luxury goods and gems.
Greece's Public Debt Management Agency named Barclays Capital, HSBC, National Bank of Greece, Nomura and Piraeus Bank as lead managers for the bond issue. Analyst Platon Monokroussos said the successful bond auction and the austerity measure announcement would help stabilise investor sentiment, but that markets would remain volatile.
Some shop owners were coming to grips with what could mean a drop in their businesses after their products were specifically targeted in the austerity measures announced on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, members of Greek labour union PAME occupied Greece's finance ministry building in central Athens early on Thursday, hanging a massive banner from the top to protest new austerity measures designed to pull the country out of its financial crisis.
Dozens of union members holding flags and chanting slogans blocked the entrance to the building, which stands on the capital's central Syntagma Square, preventing employees from entering. They unfurled banners reading: "Rise up everyone. The measures should not pass."
The union, the communist party-linked PAME, planned a demonstration in Athens later in the day, and one on Friday morning. Separately, former Olympic Airlines employees occupied the General Accounting Office, preventing workers from accessing the building and blocking roads outside, and causing traffic jams in the centre of the city during rush hour.
The protest comes a day after the Socialist government announced painful new austerity measures worth 4.8 billion euros (6.5 billion US dollars), which include cutting civil service salaries and bonuses, freezing pensions and putting up taxes. The measures come on top of an earlier austerity plan announced in January.
Prime Minister George Papandreou said on Tuesday that the measures were "not taken out of choice but out of necessity" and said European Union and market backing for the new plan was essential. If it was not forthcoming, he said, Greece might have to appeal to the International Monetary Fund for help - an option which would be unpalatable for Greece's EU partners, highlighting the bloc's inability to manage the crisis on its own.
Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said the IMF would not have imposed any harsher measures had Athens already appealed to it, and would have provided financial aid in return.
Greece's new austerity measures won initial backing from the EU and credit rating agencies. France and Germany also welcomed the new plan, although both said no financial aid was necessary at the moment. Greece shocked its EU partners in October when Papandreou's newly elected Socialists revised the budget deficit to a staggering 12.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, from earlier estimates of below 4 percent.
The crisis has hammered the euro, the common currency used by 16 nations, and made Greece's cost of borrowing on the international markets skyrocket. It has also sparked market expectations of some sort of bailout led by Germany and France.
Athens has repeatedly said it wants EU help to borrow money at lower rates, but European officials have remained tightlipped over any potential rescue plan. Papandreou heads to Berlin Friday to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel - whose country is highly reluctant to indicate concrete assistance - and then to Paris for talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy before flying to Washington to meet President Barack Obama.
AP