Economy of Greece

Businessman Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, the former major stakeholder in Proton Bank, is facing new felony charges in a case involving the sale of Neochimiki, a chemicals distributor, in a deal valued at 700 million euros, it emerged Friday.

A combination of concern in the Eurogroup over the future of the Greek economy if the country were to exit the bailout program and of negative data on German growth led the Greek stock market to one of its worst sessions in the last decade yesterday. Resistance to keep the benchmark above 1,000 points was crushed, pushing the bourse to another year-low.

The Athens Exchange announced on Friday it had lifted the suspension of trading for the stock of Trastor Real Estate Investment Company SA, following a Capital Market Commission decision to that effect.

[Reuters]

Addressing Parliament on Friday ahead of a confidence vote in the government, Deputy Finance Minister Giorgos Mavraganis heralded the continued lowering of tax rates, saying the government intended to broaden tax relief "in a programmed and decisive way."

The benchmark for Greek stocks completed its fourth consecutive week of losses on Friday, giving up 3.38 percent from the previous Friday. However, things could have been worse as it narrowly avoided posting a new year-low by bouncing back from below 1,040 points.

The 2 percent growth that the Athens benchmark was showing at at 3 p.m. vanished as soon as European Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi finished his speech, after 4 p.m., inflicting losses on the majority of stocks on a day that had seemed so full of promise at the start.

A Greek court ruled on Tuesday that OPAP’s betting monopoly in the country is legal, court officials said, rejecting a longstanding challenge by rival firms and securing the company’s market dominance in Greece.

OPAP, one of Europe’s biggest betting firms, has the exclusive right to offer lotteries in debt-laden Greece until 2030 and sports betting until 2020.

The moderate growth posted by the Athens benchmark at the end of Tuesday’s trading failed to avert another monthly drop – the sixth in a row for the Greek bourse’s main index, which in September gave up 8.63 percent of its value. It was the first time in three years that the bourse declined for a sixth month in succession.

After posting unexpectedly high growth (3.67 percent) on Friday, the Greek benchmark headed south on Monday, as investors were not convinced by the FTSE decision to allow the local market to keep its developed label (for now), given that it had been demoted to emerging status by MSCI and S&P Dow Jones.

By Vangelis Mandravelis

The Hellenic Gaming Commission has forwarded some impressive data regarding the possible abuse of profits from games of chance to the anti-money laundering authority and the Financial Crimes Squad.