European Central Bank

Greece wants to repay loans owed to its lenders from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund before they are due in a bid to cut its debt servicing costs, its finance minister said on Tuesday.

Kathimerini understands Greek banks have made a pledge to the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism that they will cut their nonperforming exposures (NPEs) to 17-22 percent of their portfolios by 2021, compared to today's highs of 43-54 percent.

International market unrest makes it harder for Piraeus Bank's management to raise 500 million euros by year-end in line with the capital strengthening plan submitted to the European Central Bank.

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank has named Greek central bank chief Yannis Stournaras as a member of the council's audit committee, replacing Erkki Liikanen, the Bank of Greece said on Friday.

The European Central Bank said on Thursday it had restarted buying Cypriot bonds under its stimulus programme after an upgrade to the country's credit rating, and pledged to make up slowly for its 2-1/2-year exclusion from ECB buying.

"The Eurosystem has...re-started purchases of Cypriot government bonds (today, with settlement in October 2018)," the ECB said in a statement.

Economic activity in the United States could fall more than two percent within a year if Washington launched a trade war on a wide front, European Central Bank researchers suggested Wednesday.

The tender for the sale of the Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens has come under the scrutiny of the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and the European Commission's competition authorities (DG Comp), following government interventions aimed at seeing the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (and therefore the state) being named the winning bidder.

While a money market foray remains off the cards for Greece for now, Cyprus managed to raise 1.5 billion euros on Tuesday in a sale of 10-year bonds, shortly after Standard & Poor's upgraded the island's credit rating out of junk status on Friday.

Government bond yields in Cyprus fell to their lowest since late March on Monday, following a decision by S&P Global to lift the country's credit rating to investment grade territory.

S&P late on Friday lifted Cyprus's rating to BBB- from BB+, citing brighter growth prospects and consolidation in the banking sector.

Eurobank is confident of beating this year's sour loan reduction target agreed with European Central Bank supervisors and plans to make further progress by 2021, the chief executive of Greece's third largest lender said on Monday.