The overall participation rate in an unprecedented Greek debt restructuring deal has exceeded Greece's expectations, a senior finance ministry official said Monday, despite some holders of Greek foreign law bonds still refusing to take part in the offer, Dow Jones reported. The official said 97% of the bonds involved in Greece's debt restructuring agreement, which cleared the way for its EUR130 billion bailout, have been tendered in the swap, beating the 95% target the country was aiming for under the plan.

A panel of dealers determined in an auction Monday that holders of Greek credit-default swaps would be paid 78.5 cents on the dollar after Greece's giant debt restructuring, a smooth result in line with expectations for a large payout to swapholders, The Wall Street Journal reported. Credit-default swaps, or CDS, are insurance-like contracts designed to pay off if creditors suffer losses. The auction's outcome means that sellers of the $3.2 billion in outstanding swaps will pay $2.5 billion in compensation to buyers.

A group of financial-market players on Monday will determine that holders of $3.2 billion in Greek credit-default swaps will receive around $2.5 billion in compensation for Greece's debt restructuring—a payout that mirrors the loss that creditors suffered, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the happy outcome owes much to mere chance. It masks flaws in the contracts, say some market participants and legal experts, that have rattled investors and are leading to calls to revamp how the swaps are handled for defaulting sovereign nations.

The euro-zone countries Wednesday signed off on Greece's second bailout program, ending a protracted and dramatic negotiating process that started last July. Their hope is that the €130 billion (roughly $169 billion) package—funded mostly by euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund—will be enough to keep Greece funded until 2014-15. But talk of a third Greek bailout has already begun, even as the ink is still drying on the second package.

Greece will have to slash a further 5.5 percent of GDP in government spending in 2013 and 2014 to meet agreed fiscal targets underpinning the second international bailout for Athens, a European Commission report said. The Compliance Report by the European Union's executive describes the progress of Greek reforms necessary for the release of new euro zone money to Athens and recommends the first disbursement be made as soon as possible.

The Greek government might have been on course on Thursday night to conclude a €206bn debt restructuring but not before meeting some embarrassing opposition to the deal, the Financial Times reported. Hours before the deadline Thursday night for offers six Greek state-controlled pension funds, which together own €3.3bn of government bonds, were still holding out. Nine other state-controlled funds with another €3bn of bonds had agreed to participate in the debt swap.

Greece moved a step closer to completing its debt restructuring when a raft of bondholders pledged to participate in the swap, likely enabling the troubled nation to force the deal through, The Wall Street Journal reported. As of late Wednesday, about 52% of the €206 billion ($270.9 billion) in bonds up for restructuring had been pledged. Portuguese and U.K. banks, as well as Italian insurance companies added their names to the list of holders agreeing to the swap, as did Greek pension funds holding €19 billion of Greek debt.

Greece has threatened to default on any of its bondholders who do not take part in a €206bn debt restructuring that officials believe is key to returning Athens to solvency, a move that turns up the heat on potential holdouts ahead of a deadline on Thursday, the Financial Times reported. The Greek public debt management agency said in a statement Athens “does not contemplate the availability of funds” to pay private investors who hold onto their bonds once the restructuring occurs.

Twelve financial institutions representing a significant chunk of outstanding Greek bonds held by private lenders have agreed to participate in the voluntary Greek debt swap set to conclude Thursday, according to a statement Monday from the Institute of International Finance, an industry group, The Wall Street Journal reported. The banks and funds all sit on the steering committee that negotiated the terms of the Greek debt restructuring under the auspices of the IIF, which represents some 450 financial institutions.

The EU reaches a watershed moment this week with the deadline for private creditors to write down Greek debt, one leaders hope will prove momentum has swung in the battle to beat the debt crisis, Agence France-Presse reported. Despite Spain warning that its budget deficit will miss an EU-agreed target by tens of billions of euros this year and with recession also forcing the Netherlands and Belgium to re-do their sums, the view remains that a corner is being turned.