Economy of Europe

Serbia has taken delivery of the pipes it will use to construct its section of the TurkStream pipeline to carry Russian natural gas to Europe, the country's energy minister said on May 21.

The ECB's assessment of six major banks working in the country has to show whether they can resist external as well as internal risks. Stress tests are already running and are due to the demand for Bulgaria to enter the Eurozone waiting room (ERM II mechanism) and the Banking Union, the 24-hour newspaper writes.

The Eurogroup has postponed the "battle of forecasts" on the Greek budget until after the European elections. On June 5, the report of the European Commission on the third post-bailout assessment will reflect its own estimate of the Greek primary surplus (and the recent voting of measures for 2019). However, the big battle will take place this fall.

Most of the early growth in prices evaporated over the course of Friday's bourse session at Athinon Avenue. The benchmark managed to hold on to some gains before the closing bell, although stocks were split between winners and losers at the end of a week of net losses for the market.

Eurogroup finance ministers and Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras may be ringing the alarm bell regarding the fiscal consequences of a barrage of handouts that the government is announcing, but it appears that the PM's office has decided to press forward anyway in order to change the negative political climate.

Warnings from the Bank of Greece and Goldman Sachs over the course of the Greek economy, not to mention international concerns on foreign markets over the raging trade war, led on Wednesday to the complete erasure of the gains recorded by the Athinon Avenue benchmark on Tuesday.

MSCI has upgraded two systemic lenders, Eurobank and National Bank, to the main index for Greece, from which they had been demoted last November after the decline in their capitalization in 2018.

The first four railcars to be used in the new Thessaloniki metro system arrived in Greece's northern port city on Wednesday.
The railcars were transported by truck from Hitachi Rail Italy's manufacturing plant in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy.
They will be assembled and positioned on the tracks, before being unveiled on Thursday.

Alpha Bank's subsidiary in Romania announced on Tuesday that it has successfully completed its inaugural 200-million-euro covered bond issue, as part of its recently established 1-billion-euro direct issuance Global Covered Bond Program.
[Reuters]

National Bank (NBG), Greece's second-largest lender by assets, on Tuesday said profit from continuing operations had risen in the first quarter of 2019 on the back of higher trading gains.