Folli Follie

The sudden appearance of buyers at the end of Wednesday’s local bourse session turned things around for the benchmark, granting it gains of nearly 1 percent and putting an end to five consecutive days of decline.

By Tom Metcalf

Dimitrios Koutsolioutsos, the founder and chairman of Folli Follie SA (FFGRP), has become a billionaire as the Athens-based maker of jewelry, handbags and fashion accessories increased almost 10-fold in the last two years.

After clocking up early gains on Tuesdat, the Greek benchmark ran out of steam and yielded some ground, although many peripheral stocks held on to their winnings.

The upcoming changes in the composition of the FTSE 25, MSCI Global Standard and MSCI Large Cap Indices as of next week resulted in a massive increase in turnover on the Greek bourse yesterday, exceeding 800 million euros in what was the last session of the month, while the benchmark returned back above the 1,220-point level.

The benchmark’s seven-session rising streak came to an end at the Athens bourse on Thursday, as the news of Alpha Bank’s better-than-expected first-quarter results was tempered by the departure of the lender’s head, Yiannis Costopoulos.

The local bourse’s fourth consecutive day of losses, albeit relatively small, wiped out all of the benchmark’s gains since the start of the year on Tuesday.

The main index is now 0.16 percent worse off than on January 1, with observers noting that the valuation of a number of listed companies are not justified by the fundamentals.

The absorption of liquidity from banks’ share capital increases and from sovereign and corporate bond issues has this month deprived the local stock market of the cash that would have kept it on the upward course of previous months. Monday’s decline took the bourse’s benchmark below the 1,200-point level, mostly due to the lack of buyers rather than aggressive selling.

OTE telecom shares led the Greek bourse to another day of moderate gains on Wednesday as it cast aside investor fatigue and reservations to help the benchmark climb above 1,350 points.

The rise recorded on Wednesday by the main banks and most mid-caps wasn’t enough to send the benchmark of the Greek bourse to a new 34-month high, as several non-banking blue chips headed south following two sessions of gains at the start of the week.

Stocks had already begun to inch up during Tuesday’s bourse session even before news of the agreement to reduce natural gas rates was made public. The deal gave the benchmark index a final push to rise above the 1,260-point level, on increased trading.