Bank of Greece

A woman whose daughter was deprived of a job in the civil service to make way for other candidates with forged degrees has sent a letter to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras calling on him to "finally restore conditions of meritocracy and transparency."

Alpha Bank will form a joint venture with Spain's Aktua to manage a loan portfolio adding up to 11 billion euros and find solutions such as debt haircuts or property sales for the borrowers. The portfolio will consist of mortgages, consumer loans and even some small corporate loans that have been delayed for at least a year.

The local credit sector categorically rejects the International Monetary Fund's fresh questioning of Greek banks' capital adequacy, saying that the risks it cites are incompatible with its forecasts.

The IMF estimates that Greek lenders may require an additional 20 billion euros in order to deal with their losses from nonperforming loans.

With a tentative debate under way on relieving Greece's debt load, Bank of Greece (BoG) Governor Yannis Stournaras on Friday called for Greece's primary surplus target for 2018 to be lowered from 3.5 percent to 2 percent of gross domestic product, saying such a move could lighten Greek debt significantly.

The first couple of months of 2016 find residential property sales in even worse shape than last year when one takes into account the flow of funding from banks to the housing market, which fell 4.1 percent from the same period last year - when the annual decline had come to 1.6 percent.

The European Central Bank lowered the cap on emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) Greek banks draw from the domestic central bank by 0.3 billion euros to 69.1 billion euros, the Bank of Greece said on Thursday.

The move reflected improving liquidity conditions in Greece's banking sector, helped by the stabilization of private sector deposit flows, the Greek central bank said.

Greece's Piraeus Bank will sell part of its 28 percent stake in insurer European Reliance to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a Piraeus official said on Wednesday.

Piraeus, Greece's largest lender by assets, plans to divest the entire stake as part of a restructuring plan which entails the disposal of non-core assets.

Greece's central bank became the target of a cyber attack by activist hacking group Anonymous on Tuesday which disrupted service of its web site, a Bank of Greece official said on Wednesday.

The online hacktivist Anonymous relaunched operation OpIcarus targeting banking sector in Europe and the United States.

The Bank of Greece had their website under a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) forcing the servers to remain offline for more than 6 hours.

Greek bank deposits fell in March for the third month in a row, data released by the country's central bank showed on Wednesday.

Business and household deposits decreased by 210 million euros, or 0.17 percent month-on-month to 121.47 billion euros ($137.5 billion), their lowest level since July 2003. They had declined to 121.68 billion euros in February.