Rouble up first day in 8 on Greek swap

The rouble appreciated against the dollar for the first time in eight days as Greece's bond swap signalled progress in resolving Europe's debt crisis, stoking appetite for riskier assets. Bond yields fell. The Russian currency gained 0.5 per cent to 29.545 per dollar in morning trading in Moscow, after weakening every session since February 27. The country's 140 billion roubles (Dh17.4 billion) of bonds due August 2016 snapped two days of declines, pushing the yield down three basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 7.38 per cent. Urals crude, the country's chief export blend, closed at $123.74 per barrel on Friday, up 1.2 per cent from when the rouble last traded on Wednesday. Greece pushed through the biggest sovereign restructuring in history on Friday after getting private investors to forgive more than €100 billion of debt, opening the way for a second bailout. The European Union is Russia's biggest trading partner. "We went into the holidays in a very bad mood, with concern about Greek debt and the private investors," Aleksey Kulakov, a currency trader at Promsvyazbank in Moscow, said by email. "Now this story has finished without our participation, so we're seeing the reaction to the good news." Russia's markets reopened yesterday after public holidays on Thursday and Friday. The rouble dropped 0.2 per cent against the dollar on Wednesday. The currency advanced 0.4 per cent to 38.8299 per euro on Sunday and 0.3 per cent to 33.875 against the central bank's target dollar-euro basket.