Eurobank Ergasias

The Greek stock market succumbed to pressure early on Wednesday but eventually narrowed its morning losses almost down to zero by the close.

The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) general index ended at 656.92 points, down less than 0.01 percent from Tuesday's 656.96 points. The large-cap FTSE-25 index contracted 0.39 percent to 1,720.96 points, while the mid-cap index expanded 0.46 percent.

Oversold bank stocks staged a remarkable rebound in Thursday's bourse session, with Alpha and National announcing a return to profit in July-September at the end of the trading day. The Athens Exchange (ATHEX) was also buoyed by rallying international markets, the drop in Greek bond yields and a favorable report by Moody's on the Bank of Greece proposal for slashing bad loans.

The planned merger between the Eurobank Group and Grivalia Properties that was announced on Monday is aimed at the full streamlining of Greece's third-largest lender through the drastic reduction of its portfolio of nonperforming exposures from 39 percent of all loans at end-September to 15 percent at end-2019 and below 10 percent in 2021.

The euphoria over the Eurobank-Grivalia merger lasted just a few hours at the Greek bourse on Monday, as concerns over next week's rebalancing of the MSCI index, which may trigger a further outflow of investors, curtailed early gains and led the banks index into negative territory.

Greek 10-year government bond yields on Monday saw their biggest one-day fall since September after a strong rally in Italian bonds helped boost support for peripheral assets.

Analysts also attributed the move to a boost for Eurobank, Greece's third-largest lender, on news it will acquire real estate company Grivalia Properties.

Eurobank, Greece's third-largest lender, will acquire real estate company Grivalia Properties, a Eurobank official told Reuters on Sunday.

The deal will be a share-swap transaction and boost the lender's capital base by about 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion), the official said without giving the value of the deal.
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Greece's third-largest lender Eurobank on Thursday reported a sharp quarterly rise in net profit in July to September, on higher fee revenues and gains from international operations.

There seems to be no end to the pressure on Greek bank stocks, as despite the Greek authorities seeking ways to address the problem of bad loans, the four systemic lenders have seen their capitalization cut in half since the start of the year.

Three out of five banks that have issued loans to Folli Follie disagreed that the troubled jewelry company should be granted an injunction to protect it from its lenders when an Athens court examined its second application late on Thursday.

The Bank of Greece's plan for the reduction of nonperforming loans through the utilization of the deferred tax assets received provisionally positive feedback from Greek bank managers on Thursday.