Economy of Greece

The Greek bourse bucked the trend set by most other European stock markets on Monday, enjoying healthy gains, albeit on thin turnover.

With the third-quarter results edging closer for most listed companies, observers consider encouraging the fact that the benchmark closed the session on the day’s high.

The local bourse lost about one-seventh of its capitalization in October as the benchmark declined 13.73 percent within the month despite Friday’s gains of almost 1 percent.

Local lenders continued to drag the Greek bourse lower on Thursday, with the banks index down 10 percent at one point before ending with daily losses of 5.06 percent, based on fears that shareholders will see their stakes shrink if lenders proceed to share capital increases.

Concerns that local banks are planning to resort to fresh share capital increases without the participation of old shareholders – in a bid to reduce the stakes that the bank bailout fund currently holds in them – led Greek credit sector stocks lower on Wednesday, as the elation at the stress test results has all but worn off. The rest of the market followed suit, despite a promising start.

While Greece came top among European Union states in terms of improving its value-added tax deficit in 2012, it still ranks among those with the biggest problems in VAT collection.

A prosecutor in charge of investigating corruption claims in Thessaloniki, Argyris Dimopoulos, has ordered a preliminary probe a large loan issued by Proton Bank before the lender was split into parts and liquidated, the Athens-Macedonia News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Continuing support for Greece’s efforts through a series of statements from European Union officials aided the Athens Stock Exchange to avoid new losses on Friday.

The Athens bourse had recorded a drop of 13.56 percent earlier in the week.

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]