National Bank of Greece

Bank Audi SAE has begun due diligence on buying National Bank of Greece's branches in Egypt, a banker involved in the process said.
The due diligence will be completed by the end of February, the banker said. The website of National Bank of Greece's Egyptian unit lists 18 branches in Cairo and elsewhere in the country.

National Bank of Greece will not restart the sale of Ethniki Insurance before the second half of this year, as it has been granted a two-year extension to end-2020 for that purpose by the European authorities.

The government may be rejoicing in the increase in spending on research and development, but the message from abroad points to the sluggish performance of Greek businesses in the R&D sector.

National Bank of Greece on Thursday announced the completion of the sale of its 99.83 percent stake in the South African Bank of Athens to GroCapital Holdings Limited, a consortium consisting of Afgri Holdings Proprietary Limited, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited and Public Investment Corporation SOC Limited.

The board of National Bank of Greece is on Thursday expected to decide whether it will accept Chinese company Gongbao's offer for the acquisition of Ethniki Insurance.

Gongbao was the only bidder in the final stage of binding financial offers for the buyout of 75 percent of Greece's leading insurer, with a bid of 676 million euros.

Economic prosecutors will summon 60 people in a new investigation into the funding of political parties in the period from 2002 until 2012.

The probe will focus on about 50 former banking executives and 10 party cadres for possible breach of faith and instigation to breach of faith, respectively.

Ethniki Insurance has announced pretax profits of 34.1 million euros for the first half of the year, 28.6 percent less than the same period of 2017.

The drop in earnings from last year's 47.8 million euros is attributed to the one-off revenues recorded in 2017 from the sale of stakes in foreign companies.

The second-quarter financial results published by the National Bank of Greece (NBG) on Friday reflected the gradual strengthening of operating profits and of liquidity, and the achievement of the target for the reduction of nonperforming exposures for the entire 2018 already from the first half of the year.

The European Investment Bank and National Bank of Greece have signed a funding agreement up to 200 million euros aimed at financing small and medium-sized enterprises, forming part of the so-called Juncker funding package.

The funding is supplied through the private placement of covered NBG bonds.

The management of National Bank of Greece told the lender's annual general meeting on Thursday that it will place emphasis on the lender's full transformation through changes to its operational model to meet the challenges of the time and the economy's funding needs.