Wanted: Foreign investment

Getting Greece back on its feet and on a growth trajectory will require foreign capital in the form of major investments. Otherwise the financial crisis will linger for many years to come.

For a short period, the country actually became an investment hot spot. Most of the credit should go to Antonis Samaras, the former conservative premier who did a lot of work on an interpersonal level and managed to create the impression that Athens was open for business. Even big investors who put their money in Greece, and lost, now acknowledge the positive climate created at the time.

It's not easy to guess the ingredients of that successful recipe, which, in a way, brought together Messinia and Harvard Business School. It is however safe to say that the recipe broke a big taboo at the time. Previously, even conservative leaders avoided meeting with foreign investors in public...