Piraeus Group

The management of Piraeus Bank has announced a program to boost its capital base by 1 billion euros to create the cash reserves that will allow it to proceed with a more aggressive reduction of its bad-loan portfolio.

While informing analysts of the bank's third-quarter financial results, Chief Executive Christos Megalou said that the cash boost plan has four main points.

Tourism accommodation in Athens will expand by some 5,000 beds in the coming years, the senior director general of the Piraeus Group and chief executive at Piraeus Real Estate estimated.

The Piraeus Group is said to have received a bid worth 50 million euros for its 9.8 percent stake in the consortium that operates the Attiki Odos ring road around the Greek capital.

Following months of hard work, Piraeus Bank seems to have secured a proposal by the Davidson Kempner private equity fund.

The local banking system will have to bring the ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans down to single digits through extending its endeavors beyond 2019 with the submission of new plans up to 2022, Piraeus Bank chief executive Christos Megalou told the lender's general shareholders meeting on Friday.

Commercial property experts see the recent deal between Lamda Development and Varde Partners as confirmation of estimates that shopping centers would become a target for investors from both Greece and abroad, the reson being the considerable resistance malls have shown in the face of pressure from the economic crisis.

Former Eurobank chief executive officer Christos Megalou is the new head of Piraeus Bank, completing the administrative changes in the group after more than a year.

Wednesday's Piraeus Bank board meeting, during which a new chief executive officer was supposed to be elected for the lender, was unexpectedly suspended as an email from the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) arrived asking for the process to be stopped so that the two short-listed candidates could be examined further.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

Piraeus Group announced on Thursday the sale of 98.5 percent of its Egyptian subsidiary, Piraeus Bank Egypt, to Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait (ABK) for $150 million.

The statement noted that the price agreed amounts to 1.5 times the Egyptian lender?s equities.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

The country?s four main banks were forced to write off old and expired debts of more than 2.5 billion euros last year in an effort to clean up their financial accounts, abandoning expected revenues whose collection they deemed unlikely.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

Piraeus Group head Michalis Sallas is poised to become the new president of the Hellenic Bank Association as soon as the administrative changes at the National Bank of Greece are completed.