Eurobank Ergasias

Eurobank is putting its fourth portfolio of properties up for sale in the context of a broad program for relieving its financial report of the burden of real estate assets; they amount to 5,100, not including those of former subsidiary Grivalia. The portfolio sale constitutes Eurobank's biggest to date.

The acquisition of FPS by Italian group doValue will serve as a springboard for the latter's expansion in the wider Southeastern Europe region according to its CEO Andrea Mangoni.

In an interview with Kathimerini, Mangoni says that the Italian group's aim is to become the leading servicer of nonperforming exposures in Greece ahead of the emergence of the secondary NPE market.

Stocks suffered a day of losses at the Athens Stock Exchange on Friday, with just a handful of sessions left till the end of the year for traders to complete their window dressing, but the benchmark didn't lose all its weekly gains, posting an increase of 0.11 percent compared to the previous Friday.

Eurobank subsidiary FPS is set to evolve into one of the biggest companies in its domain in Greece - with a role in the broader market of Southeastern Europe too - now that Italy's doValue, a member of the Fortress Group, has secured an 80 percent stake in the bad-loan management firm.

The board of Greek lender Eurobank will meet on Thursday to approve a deal to sell a majority stake in the bank's loan servicing unit FPS to Italy's biggest loan recovery firm doValue, banking sources told Reuters.

The Italian firm has secured an 80 percent stake in Financial Planning Services (FPS), the sources said.

Imported concerns about the US-Chinese trade negotiations weighed on the Greek stock market on Wednesday, on the back of the release of Alpha Bank's third-quarter results on Tuesday and ahead of Thursday's results by National and Eurobank.

Italy's biggest loan recovery firm doValue has emerged as the strongest bidder for Eurobank's loan servicing unit, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.
The deal is critical for the turnaround of Greece's third largest lender.

A flurry of reports on the Greek credit sector confirmed the positive view held by foreign firms on local banks these days.

Blue chips got off to a good start on Monday morning in Athens, but the bulk of those gains had evaporated by the end of trade and the majority of stocks ended up in negative territory.

Eurobank said on Thursday it was selling two real estate portfolios worth a combined 84 million euros to Brook Lane Capital and plans to put a third portfolio up for sale.
Eurobank, which is 2.4 percent owned by Greece's HFSF bank rescue fund after being bailed out during the country's debt crisis, repossessed most of the properties, residential and commercial, after loan defaults.