"I see no reason why it (Greece) should not return to markets in 18-30 months," said Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a global bank association, in an interview with Greek newspaper Kathimerini.
Greece's private sector creditors will take a 21 percent loss on their bond holdings as part of a 37 billion euro contribution to a rescue plan for the debt-stricken country, agreed at a euro zone summit earlier this month.
Under the plan, banks and insurance companies are invited to voluntarily swap their Greek government bonds for longer maturity paper at lower interest rates.
Bank lobby IIF, which is helping coordinate talks on the bond exchange which started in Athens this week, has estimated that about 90 percent of all private holders of Greek debt maturing by 2020 will take part in the scheme.
"I am certain that the (90 percent) target can be achieved, if everyone does their work and cooperates harmoniously," Dallara told Kathimerini.
Dallara dismissed analysts' concerns that Greece's latest bailout package offers respite but will ultimately fail to make the country's debt sustainable.
"I disagree," he said. "In my view, this is a very strong package for debt sustainability."
Dallara also predicted that Greek banks, the biggest holders of the country's debt, will not have to be nationalised or bought out by rivals to cope with losses they would incur under the bond swap.
"In our view, and based on the results of stress tests, most Greek banks can manage the losses resulting from this agreement without a need for large capital increases," Dallara said.
Meanwhile in Berlin, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble denied on Saturday that this month's Greek bailout deal paves the way for a future 'transfer union' in which euro zone countries are liable for each others' debts.
Schaueble's remarks in a newspaper interview to be published on Sunday follow his attempt earlier this week to reassure conservative political colleagues that a new euro zone rescue fund would not have 'carte blanche' to buy bonds of states in difficulty.
Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann warned last week that the 109 billion euro aid package for debt-stricken Greece weakened incentives for euro zone countries to maintain solid finances and led towards a fiscal transfer union.
"I don't like the term as it only leads to misunderstandings and has nothing to do with the outcome of the summit," Schaeuble told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, according to a transcript provided by the paper late on Saturday.
"We are not harmonising interest rates. We are not collectivising debt risk. We are creating effective crisis mechanisms -- nothing more and nothing less. The requirement to make savings, which is tied to the aid, exerts a disciplinary effect on the states that receive it."
German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler on Wednesday encouraged German firms to invest in Greece, likening the opportunities to those in Poland after the fall of communism.
Schaeuble offered a different analogy.
"Greece now has the toughest job to do," he said. "Just ask people from the former East Germany what it's like to suddenly face the competitive pressure of being in a common currency area."
After German reunification in 1990, and the conversion of their currency at a greatly overvalued exchange rate to the mark, regions formerly in East Germany suffered massive unemployment as high costs and wages meant firms were unable to compete with their more productive western counterparts.
Twenty years later, and after billions of euros in subsidies from the former West Germany, eastern regions are still noticeably poorer than those in the west.
