Asset-backed security

The Central Bank of Turkey (CBRT) on March 31 introduced new measures to limit the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The steps aimed to back monetary transmission mechanisms, banks' flexibility in liquidity management, uninterrupted credit flows to the corporate sector, and firms exporting goods and services.

Piraeus Bank is launching the process for its first bad-loan portfolio securitization, opening the virtual data rooms to candidate investors in the Phoenix package within March.

Eurobank has applied to take part in Greece's Hercules bad loan reduction scheme via a 7.5-billion-euro securitization, the country's third-largest bank said.
Banks in Greece have been working to reduce a pile of about 75 billion euros in bad loans, a legacy of a financial crisis that shrank the country's economy by a quarter.

Turkey has issued an asset-backed security worth 3.15 billion Turkish Liras ($590 million), the country's Treasury and Finance Ministry said in a statement on Dec. 7.

By George Georgiopoulos & Jonathan Saul

Greece's Alpha Bank plans to securitise about 1.0 billion euros ($1.36 billion) of shipping loans this summer in one of the first European asset-backed deals in this industry for years, a banker with Alpha Bank and another finance industry source said on Friday.