Europe News

Putting Greek Rescue Plan Into Action the Hard Part: El-Erian

Coming to an agreement over how to tackle Greece's debt issues will be easier than putting the strategy into place, Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian said.

Aris Messinis | AFP | Getty Images

With eurozone finance ministers convening a summit on how to reduce Greece's debt burden, the co-CEO of the largest bond fund in the world said he expects additional steps will be taken to provide market liquidity and manage the burgeoning sovereign debt crisis.

But El-Erian told CNBC he also expects multiple obstacles to pop up that could make soothing jittery financial marketsan elusive goal.

"There's lots of question marks out there. It's not clear how Europe is going to deal with both its debt and growth issues," he said. "We are likely to get a good announcement from the negotiations between the Greek government and the steering committee of the (Institute of International Finance). However, there's a number of question marks after that."

Specifically, El-Erian broke the issues down into four concerns:

1) The participation rate from euro zone companies as well as global leaders in whatever program materializes.

2) How the Greek restructuringis handled — whether it will be treated as an outright default, which would trigger insurance policies known as credit default swaps against the debt, or if it will be regarded as voluntary and thus not a credit event that would cause CDS payoffs.

3) Further details about the program and its funding. Christine Legarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, earlier in the morning told CNBC that the IMF will need a total of $500 billion, or another $350 billion, for its liquidity fund.

4) Fiscal concerns with Greece, specifically the 120 percent ratio of debt to gross domestic product that will exist going forward.

"It's still a big issue, unfortunately," El-Erian said. "My gut is telling me that they get an agreement at the level of the negotiators, but execution risk is very high."