Bookmakers

Punters are putting their money on this year's Nobel Peace Prize going to Greek islanders who have opened their hearts and homes to hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

The award will be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway, and as usual the Norwegian Nobel Committee isn't dropping any hints about its choice.

Greece's biggest betting company OPAP, will pay an extra 70 million to 75 million euros in tax this year under new laws on gross gaming revenues, Chief Executive Kamil Ziegler said on Monday.

The former state monopoly, majority-owned and managed by a Greek-Czech fund since 2013, paid more than 600 million euros in taxes last year.

The Finance Ministry has decided to abolish the levy of 5 cents per entry in games of chance organized by Greek betting firm OPAP.

Instead of the controversial levy, the new tax bill provides for an increase in the tax on gaming company net revenues from 30 to 35 percent.

Athens-listed Intralot has announced the acquisition of a 49% stake in Bulgaria's Eurobet, a company that offers numerical games and scratch tickets.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by June 2016 pending regulatory approvals, the Greek lottery and gambling technology provider said in a statement on Wednesday.

The price of the deal was not disclosed.

OPAP strongly reacted to government’s decision to impose an extra charge on lottery games operated by the company -a decision aimed to boost state revenues.

Odysseas Christoforou, general manager of Corporate Communication in OPAP, said the move was discriminatory against OPAP and noted that such a move would have serious negative consequences.

The Greek Organization of Football Prognostics SA (OPAP) said on Monday that it was opposed to scenarios of extra charges or taxes on any of its games following reports regarding this.

The government is seeking ways to line its coffers. In a frantic search for funds, the Finance Ministry has put Greece’s agriculture sector and gambling under the microscope.

Agriculture

* 9 in 10 farmers (466,574 of a total of 532,917 people) stated earnings less than 5,000 euros last year.

Greece had a contingency plan to open corruption investigations into German companies so as to “raise the cost of rupture” for Greece’s creditors. The targeted companies included Siemens, Lidl and Allianz.

British bookmaker William Hill has re-opened its book on whether Greece will leave the eurozone by the end of this year, it said on Thursday.

Growing nerves over Greece have been the talk of financial markets for the past week, but online betting firms see only around a one-in-five chance it will leave the eurozone this year -- a lower likelihood than earlier this year.