Piraeus Bank

The Greek ministry of development on Thursday approved the merger of Piraeus Bank and Geniki Bank, with the former fully absorbing the latter following a decision by both lenders’ boards of directors.

The benchmark of the Greek stock exchange has added more than 8 percent in just two sessions, climbing almost 40 points on Wednesday on reports that the government is close to reaching a deal with its creditors and that international credit rating agencies are about to upgrade Greece.

A former mayor of Marathon, in northeastern Attica, on Monday denied claims that he hid 3.4 million euros from tax authorities after the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) released details of more than a dozen cases of alleged financial offenses. Spyros Zagaris, who was the mayor of Marathon from 2007 to 2011, claimed the balance of his account at Piraeus Bank had never exceeded 7 euros.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

Eurobank recorded a significant improvement in its financial figures for the first nine months of the year as its third-quarter results illustrated on Friday, with bank officials stating that they pave the way for the group’s return to profits next year.

Concerns that local banks are planning to resort to fresh share capital increases without the participation of old shareholders – in a bid to reduce the stakes that the bank bailout fund currently holds in them – led Greek credit sector stocks lower on Wednesday, as the elation at the stress test results has all but worn off. The rest of the market followed suit, despite a promising start.

After the morning growth up to the 1.024 points, the benchmark of the Athens stock market dived to 945 before settling for 958 at the end of Monday's session, as investors chose to cash in on the gains generated last week before the announcement of the banks’ stress test results on Sunday.

Greek bank shares jumped more than 5 percent early on Monday, leading the broader equities market higher, after the European Central Bank's health check turned out better than expected, traders said.

Greek banks received what amounts to a virtually clean bill of health from the European Central Bank, as the results of the stress tests Frankfurt performed on the four systemic lenders of this country showed on Sunday that Alpha and Piraeus have completed the exercise successfully through their dynamic picture, and only Eurobank and National need to cover the negligible amount of 291 million e

The bourse benchmark managed to recover most of the losses incurred during Thursday’s session at Athinon Avenue, having dropped as low as 966 points, to close at just over the 990-point mark.

The third straight day of Greek stock market gains brought the benchmark close to the 1,000-point mark on Tuesday, as investors are pricing in expectations for a very positive result to the European Central Bank’s stress tests on local banks, which are to be announced this Sunday. The increased turnover points to an extensive move to cancel out last week’s major losses.