The FT reports that Athens told banks handling the sale of this week’s €5bn Greek bond issue to make sure they did not allocate any bonds to hedge funds or any bodies that might be a proxy for them.

In a meeting in Berlin on Friday Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, promised a joint push both in the European Union and the Group of 20 leading economies to clamp down on speculators who seek to exploit uncertainty over sovereign debt.

Ms Merkel said that both countries would seek “to show that speculative instruments need to be contained, especially where it is speculation against states”. She mentioned credit default swaps as one target of such an initiative, but gave no other clear details.