Piraeus Bank

After slipping off sellers' radar in recent days, banks were back at the forefront on Wednesday as local stocks headed south in the strongest sign to date that investors are simply not convinced that the Greek economy is set to stage a full recovery.

Piraeus Bank is on course of reducing its stock of nonperforming loans to 19.1 billion euros by the end of the year, from 23 billion in end-March, according to an interview the group's Chief Executive Officer Christos Megalou gave to Bloomberg.

The bank has already sold bad loans worth about half a billion from its subsidiaries in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

The stock market in Athens shook off the European Central Bank's statements that kept Greece's chances of entering the ECB bond-buying program remote, and took the benchmark back above the 820-point mark on Tuesday. Trading volume dropped below 50 million euros.

Fitch credit ratings agency has upgraded the Greek banks in light of the recent deal at the EuroGroup and the completion of the second review. Fitch has affirmed the Long-Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) of National Bank of Greece S.A. (NBG), Alpha Bank AE (Alpha), Piraeus Bank S.A. (Piraeus) and Eurobank Ergasias S.A. (Eurobank) at ‘Restricted Default’ (RD).

The head of the Athens court of first instance, Ilias Zagoraios, is preparing to bring criminal charges against employees of the Pegasus media group and three major Greek banks which are alleged to have granted Pegasus millions of euros in loans without adequate guarantees and to have allowed the loans to remain unserviced.

Piraeus Bank, Greece's largest lender by assets, aims to sell its Balkan businesses and certain other holdings and shrink its bad loans portfolio, its new chief executive told reporters on Wednesday, outlining the group's plans up to 2020.

"Our vision is to be the most credible bank in Greece," said CEO Christos Megalou, who took over in April.

Piraeus Bank, Greece's largest bank by assets, aims to sell its Balkan businesses and certain other holdings and shrink its bad loans portfolio, its new chief executive told reporters on Wednesday, outlining the group's plans up to 2020.

"Our vision is to be the most credible bank in Greece," said CEO Christos Megalou, who took over in April.

The benchmark of the Athens bourse has cleared the 700-point bar for the first time since early November 2015 after a third consecutive northbound session on Wednesday, while the banks index has now offset all of the losses incurred over the course of this year. Turnover remained on a level reminiscent of the years before the capital controls were imposed.

Piraeus Bank, Greece's largest lender by assets, tumbled to a fourth-quarter loss after booking higher bad debt provisions, the only one of the country's big four banks that was not profitable in the last three months of 2016.

Reports of a near-agreement between Athens and its creditors in Brussels on the majority of issues found at least a few investors in the Greek stock market willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on Monday. The benchmark posted a moderate rise, albeit on low trading volume.