Bank

By Sotiris Nikas

Greece is on Thursday set to reopen the three- and five-year bonds originally issued earlier this year, aiming to exchange them for existing Greek treasury bills.

Top National Bank of Greece officials expressed optimism on Friday that the country will emerge from the financial crisis and certainty that Greek banks will grow stronger following the European stress tests.

Cyber crime police on Cyprus were investigating a case on Friday involving a malicious text message announcing that there would be a new haircut on bank deposits in the island-nation.

The ostensible author of the text, Dimitra Kalogirou, chief of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, denied sending the SMS and alerted authorities.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

Private sector deleveraging, or the reduction of loans to households and enterprises, is continuing despite the significant improvement in the country’s economy.

For some 200,000 individuals and businesses with deposits at Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB) "financial life has hardly returned to normal" since June, the New York Times has said.

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The largest state-run lender, Ziraat Bank, applies to banking watchdog to establish an Islamic lender. The government plans to establish three state-owned Islamic banks by the end of 2015 State-run Ziraat Bank has applied to the country’s banking watchdog (BDDK) to establish an Islamic lender, it said in a statement on Aug. 29.

Caretaker Finance Minister Rumen Porozhanov has said that depositors may get partial access to their funds at Bulgaria's troubled Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB, Corpbank) in September.

By Evgenia Tzortzi

The government is examining the prospect of transforming ETEAN, the National Fund for Entrepreneurship and Growth, into a new operation that could serve as a development bank and also absorb other financial instruments, with the overall objective of increasing liquidity in the marketplace.

The Ministry of Development and Competitiveness has denied reports that it plans to toughen up existing legislation commonly referred to as the Katseli law which offers protection to households overburdened by debt.

One third of the money, withdrawn from Bulgarian banks in June was deposited back in the banks, shows data of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB).

During the bank panic in June, depositors withdrew BGN 1.043 B, which was somewhat of an anomaly, considering that in the past few years, the households saved in banks between BGN 3 B and 5 B per year.