Hellenic Financial Stability Fund

The process for the appointment of a new chief executive officer will resume in 2017, Piraeus Bank's governing board decided on Monday.

Earlier, the majority of the board had voted down the lone candidacy of Christos Papadopoulos due to reservations expressed by the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM).

National Bank of Greece announced on Thursday it has proceeded to the repayment of contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) amounting to 2.03 billion euros which it issued in December 2015 and were held by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF).

[Reuters]

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.

The Hellenic Financial Stability Fund has rejected former Piraeus Bank chief executive Anthimos Thomopoulos's candidacy for his old post, opting instead to propose Christos Papadopoulos and Stelios Papadopoulos (who are not related) for the position at the lender of which the bank bailout fund controls 26 percent.

There seems to be no end to the administration crisis at National Bank of Greece, as immediately after Panayiotis Thomopoulos was elected the group's new president on Wednesday, the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, NBG's main stakeholder, stated it had voted against him and is examining the option of calling an extraordinary general meeting.

The National Bank of Greece board meeting interrupted last week upon the demand of major shareholder the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund due to a clash over the election of a new president is scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

National Bank of Greece, the country's oldest, remains without a president, an issue that will be revisited in the coming days. At the same time, its main shareholder, bank bailout fund HFSF, is also effectively headless.

Panayiotis Thomopoulos, former deputy governor of the Bank of Greece and former chairman of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, was elected chairman of the National Bank of Greece by the lender's board on Thursday.

Thomopoulos is replacing chairwoman Louka Katseli.

The European Central Bank maintained the cap on emergency liquidity assistance Greek banks draw from the domestic central bank at 51.8 billion euros, the Bank of Greece said on Thursday.

The move reflected stabilizing liquidity conditions in Greece's banking sector, taking into account private sector deposit flows, the Greek central bank said.

The completion of management changes in Greek banks - a critical issue that was supposed to have closed weeks ago - remains open and it appears that it will take several more weeks before new administrations are appointed.