ATHENS, Greece
Greek artist Virginia Axioti works on the billboard of the “Avengers: Endgame” movie in Athens, Greece, April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
April 25, 2019
By Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek artist Virginia Axioti’s work is seen by thousands of people every week, but none of it is digital.
As the designer of hand-painted billboards that hang over the entrance to Athens’ Athinaion cinema advertising the newest film, she can count on a regular audience without having to embrace the internet.
Her latest work set the scene for the Greek opening on Wednesday night of “Avengers: Endgame” from Disney’s Marvel Studios, the culmination of 22 Marvel films since 2007, which could break global box-office records.
Sticking with hand-painted billboards continues a tradition introduced in 1960 at the 970-seat cinema, when it was founded by Axioti’s grandfather and great-uncle. One of the city’s oldest cinemas, it is the only one that still crafts its billboard posters by hand.
“The most basic difference (with digital posters) … is the human touch. It stands out, the gaze will stay on it … it is not static, it is like something alive,” the 41 year old artist, now a co-owner of the cinema, told Reuters.
Still, creating an advert for Disney’s latest blockbuster sets a particular challenge, with seven superheroes in various poses to accommodate.
“I am forced to add more elements than I would (normally), which makes it too busy for my taste, like it has a lot of noise,” Axioti said from the studio in her home in an Athens suburb, as she deftly added color to Tony Stark’s hair, played on screen by Robert Downey Jr.
Axioti works in turns with Vassilis Dimitriou, a former boxer who has been painting for the Athinaion for over four decades.
The cinema’s location at a busy intersection in the Ampelokipoi district of the city guarantees a big audience for her work and allows passers-by an opportunity for escapism however brief, she said.
Axioti, a fine arts graduate who also sings and plays music, spends three to four days at a time to complete a poster and produces between 20 and 25 each year.
The size of the billboards, which average 6.2 x 2.20 meters pose a regular challenge, she says, because she is quite petite.
Her favorite billboard was for the 2017 drama “Darkest Hour” about a period of Winston Churchill’s time as British prime minister during World War Two.
A big fan of the actor Gary Oldman who plays Churchill, she liked it so much, she said, that she kept it at home for a day, just so she could keep looking at it on her living room wall.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A man waits at a Public Power Corporation (PPC) branch to enter a repayment scheme for their debts in Athens, Greece, March 3, 2017. Picture taken March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
April 24, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek power utility Public Power Corp (PPC) said on Wednesday that it will repay a bond due next month and that its operations and spending plan will continue smoothly.
Shares in PPC, which is 51 percent state-owned, tumbled 18 percent on Wednesday after the utility posted a bigger than expected 2018 loss of 542 million euros ($608 million) on Tuesday.
Analysts cited weak results and an auditor’s report noting “material uncertainty” due to declining revenues, significant pre-tax losses and increased liabilities for Wednesday’s losses.
PPC last week signed a 200 million euro syndicated loan with Greek banks to help repay a 350 million euro bond due on May 1.
In a statement on Wednesday, it said that it has already made a deposit to repay the holders of the bond.
It added that it has taken all necessary measures “for the seamless continuation of the group’s operations and the full implementation of its investment plan of 792 million euros in 2019.”
Those measures included financing of 677 million euros this year that it has already secured and prepayment for electricity supplies from state entities worth 550 million euros, which was collected in March.
(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addresses lawmakers during a parliamentary session before a vote on German World War II reparations in Athens, Greece April 17, 2019. REUTERS/Costas Baltas
April 17, 2019
By Renee Maltezou and George Georgiopoulos
ATHENS (Reuters) – The Greek parliament will vote Wednesday on whether Greece should pursue billions of euros in reparations from Germany for the Nazi occupation during World War Two, an issue Germany says was settled long ago.
Neverthelesss, successive Greek governments have said Germany owes Greece. Wednesday’s vote in the 300-seat house, however, will be the first official decision by parliament on the question, which resurfaced after Greece became mired in a debt crisis a decade ago.
Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis is expected to submit a proposal – based on a parliamentary commission report that assessed the cost of the occupation at upwards of 300 billion euros – on the next legal and diplomatic steps Greece would take and put it to a vote in the evening.
“Greece should, and I think it has the means, negotiate so that Germany recognizes … the reparations, accepting that there is a moral, political and economic issue,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sia Anagnostopoulou.
“Greece paid one of the biggest blood and destruction tolls (in World War Two),” she said, promising to start a diplomatic campaign.
Despite the estimates, it is not clear how much money Greece would seek in reparations. Any move to formally seek reparations would probably be legally enforceable, but the issue is a deeply emotive one that will gain traction in an election year.
Greece emerged in the past year from a decade of austerity imposed by international lenders in return for bailouts that kept it afloat after the debt crisis erupted in 2010.
Many Greeks blamed their biggest creditor, Germany, for the painful cuts attached to the rescue loans, which they feel have stripped them of sovereignty.
Germany has in the past apologized for Nazi-era crimes but has not been willing to discuss reparations. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert repeated Berlin’s view that the issue has long been settled.
“The question of German reparations has been conclusively settled, both legally and politically,” he said. “We are, and I hope you can believe us, aware of our historic responsibility.”
Germany invaded Greece in May 1941, raising the swastika over the Acropolis in Athens. About a thousand Greek villages were razed during the war and tens of thousands of people killed in reprisals by Nazi troops, trying to crush Greek resistance.
The parliamentary committee assessed the occupation cost as at least 269 billion euros ($304 billion), rising to over 300 billion euros with the inclusion of an amount the Nazis forced the Bank of Greece to hand over in 1942, a year after they invaded Greece.
That “occupation loan” also helped bankroll Hitler’s military campaign in North Africa.
Germany has denied owing anything to Greece since it paid Athens the sum of 115 million deutschmarks in 1960.
(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke and Thomas Escritt, editing by Michele Kambas and Larry King)
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FILE PHOTO: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attends joint statements with his Danish counterpart Lars Loekke Rasmussen after their meeting at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, April 4, 2019.REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo
April 15, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Repaying earlier expensive International Monetary Fund loans is a significant step for Greece which will create favorable conditions for its economy, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday, promising more relief measures.
“We are gaining points of (economic) freedom,” Tsipras said during an interview with Greece’s Antenna television.
Greece this week plans to file a request to the euro zone’s bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), seeking its consent for the early repayment of the loans, sources told Reuters earlier Monday.
The country emerged from its third international bailout since 2010 in August last year.
During the live interview, Tsipras also said that his administration would not lower a tax-free threshold, a measure which has been agreed with international lenders and is supposed to take effect next year to broaden the country’s tax base.
“The tax free (threshold) will not be reduced as long as Syriza is in government,” Tsipras said, referring to his left-wing party in power since 2015.
Elections are due later this year and the leftist leader ruled out an election earlier than that, vowing his government would see through its full term of 4 years.
Greece is expected to meet its fiscal targets again this year and any outperformance will be distributed to the public, Tsipras said.
“After the (Easter) holidays I will meet with the minister of finance to consider what we can offer, not as a pre-election gift but as permanent relief measures because the Greek economy is faring better.”
(Reporting By Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou, writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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FILE PHOTO: A Greek flag flutters atop the parliament building in Athens, Greece, June 21, 2018. REUTERS/Costas Baltas/ File Photo
April 15, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece plans to file a request this week seeking the euro zone bailout fund’s consent to the early repayment of expensive loans owed to the International Monetary Fund, a source close to the process told Reuters Monday.
Greece wants to repay about 3.7 billion euros in IMF loans, the source said. The European Stability Mechanism would have to be repaid the same amount, under Greece’s bailout terms, but is likely to waive this right.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Alison Williams)
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Main opposition New Democracy conservative party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaks during an interview with Reuters at the party’s headquarters in Athens, Greece, April 8, 2019. Picture taken April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
April 9, 2019
By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s potential next prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, says he plans to unblock privatizations, cut taxes and enact meaningful reforms to attract investment, increase state efficiency and make the pension system viable.
With opinion polls putting him more than 10 points ahead of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the conservative leader is confident an EU election next month will prove to be a springboard to winning a national vote expected by the autumn.
“We’ll be implementing them (reforms) not because they are part of a program but because we truly believe that they are necessary to make the Greek economy more competitive,” Mitsotakis told Reuters from the headquarters of New Democracy, Greece’s main opposition party.
By implementing reforms, he says Greece can persuade its lenders, who still monitor the economy even after it officially exited its 280 billion euro financial crisis bailouts, to lower their targets and convince investors that it is out of the woods.
The 51-year-old scion of a powerful family of politicians considers Greece’s post-bailout primary surplus targets “too high”, but says that they must be respected “at least in the short term”.
Greece tapped international bond markets with a 10-year bond earlier this year, its first such issue in a decade. But at 18 percent the unemployment rate remains the highest in the euro zone and so is its debt, standing at 180 percent of output.
The economy is not the only issue for a future Greek leader to grapple with.
Mitsotakis maintains deep reservations at the deal brokered by the leftist government recognizing the neighboring state with the name North Macedonia. Skopje should not expect an automatic entry pass into the European Union now the name dispute is resolved, Mitsotakis said.
With many Greeks still struggling with the effects of creditor-mandated austerity though, the upcoming elections will undoubtedly become a referendum on how firebrand leftist Tsipras, elected in 2015, handled the crisis.
Mitsotakis camp is already on a war footing ahead of the EU parliamentary vote on May 26. People come and go from his office, adorned with paintings, pictures of his family and his late father – a former prime minister – books, a model ship named “Leadership” and a stuffed toy lion.
People who know him say an unflappable demeanor denotes an attention to detail, a workaholic who came in as an outsider to win the party leadership in 2016.
Greece emerged from the third bailout nine months ago.
But Mitsotakis says it has not turned a corner – it is just comparatively better than 2015, when he says bungled negotiation tactics by Tsipras’s government almost got it thrown out of the euro zone. Tsipras says he had no other option but to accept it.
“VICIOUS CIRCLE”
The economic monitoring framework includes meeting an annual primary budget surplus – excluding debt servicing costs – of 3.5 percent of GDP until 2022.
“Once we deliver the reforms, I think that would be the right time to discuss the primary surpluses,” he said.
Apart from pushing hard on “emblematic investments”, such as a real estate project at the former Athens airport and a Chinese investment at Greece’s largest port in Piraeus, his gameplan includes cutting corporate tax to 20 percent from 28 percent and tax on dividends to 5 from 10 percent within two years.
The middle-class is overtaxed, he said: “They’ve taken more money out of people’s pockets than it was necessary so I plan to return some of it back to people and to the corporations.”
Greece sees growth at 2.5 percent this year. But Mitsotakis said the country needed at least 4 percent economic growth “to convince everyone that it has broken out of the vicious circle”.
“At the end of the day what is going to make our debt sustainable is if Greece is going to move to a different growth trajectory,” he said.
Mitsotakis’s party stridently opposed the deal recognizing the ex-Yugoslav Republic as North Macedonia, a view shared by many believing the name claimed by the northern state is an appropriation of Greek culture and heritage.
“Although we don’t like the agreement we’ll respect it,” the leader said. “But we’ll work to improve aspects or consequences of the agreement that are currently not in our interest.”
For years, the wrangle has stopped the small state from joining NATO and the EU.
North Macedonia is expected to join the alliance in 2020. But joining the EU, which includes each member state approving a candidate’s compliance in various policy areas, is a longer process.
“I don’t think anyone should expect Greece to agree to open and close chapters when there are still outstanding issues which have not been addressed by the agreement,” Mitsotakis said.
“Of course we fully retain the right to block this process if we think that our national interests are not met.”
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: OANN
A Greek national flag flies atop the Athens Academy next to the statues of ancient goddess Athena (L) and Greek philosopher Plato in Athens, Greece, August 20, 2018. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
April 5, 2019
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Friday to disburse nearly 1 billion euros as a grant to Greece as part of a post-bailout program of monitoring reforms, euro zone officials said.
The money was conditional on Athens respecting its reform commitments, especially a law on banks’ recovery of debt that goes bad, which is to reduce the large burden of non-performing loans on Greek lenders’ balance sheets.
The funds will boost Greece’s already large cash buffers and could allow the country to borrow at more favorable rates.
Greece exited its last bailout in August after eight years of financial support from euro zone creditors and the International Monetary Fund. It has already successfully tapped financial markets again.
The grant is the first disbursement from a package of 4.8 billion euros that euro zone creditors have pledged to Greece until 2022 as part of the post-bailout program, which requires Athens to continue reforms.
The money partly comes from profits made by euro zone central banks on their holdings of Greek bonds that will gradually mature over the coming years.
(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski and Francesco Guarascio)
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FILE PHOTO: A man stands next to a kiosk selling Greek and EU flags in Athens, Greece, June 21, 2018.REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo
April 3, 2019
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission recommended on Wednesday the disbursement of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in a grant to Greece as part of its post-bailout program after Athens passed reforms required by creditors.
The move, that needs to be endorsed by euro zone finance ministers at their meeting on Friday, will boost Greece’s already large cash buffers and make it easier for the country borrow at more favorable rates when it returns to full market financing after years of financial support from EU creditors and the International Monetary Fund.
Greece exited its last bailout in August.
The Commission decision followed last week’s approval by the Greek Parliament of a reform to facilitate banks’ recovery of debt that went bad, a move that is expected to reduce the large burden of non-performing loans on Greek lenders’ balance sheets.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Jan Strupczewski)
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FILE PHOTO: Valdis Dombrovskis attend a news conference with Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos (not pictured) at the Finance Ministry in Athens, Greece, June 15, 2018. REUTERS/Costas Baltas/File Photo
April 2, 2019
By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union’s financial services chief has told regulators to prioritize work on an instrument to collect share prices for investors to find the cheapest deals.
The instrument, known as a “consolidated tape”, has long been a cherished goal for users of Europe’s fragmented stock markets currently faced with about 20 trading venues, some offering the same stocks.
The tape distributes real time trade and quotes from trading venues in the market. The United States introduced such a tape decades ago to bolster efficiency in trading by knitting together platforms.
The EU’s revised “MiFID II” securities rules, introduced in 2018, gave Brussels powers to appoint a provider if a private sector tape for a reasonable cost remains elusive.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is reviewing how MiFID II is working, but it told the EU’s financial services chief Valdis Dombrovskis last week that due to Brexit, this work is being delayed by 6-24 months.
“We are currently assessing those delays by ESMA,” Dombrovskis told the European Parliament’s economic affairs committee on Tuesday.
“We will assess whether it’s time to consider establishing more market transparency by means of a consolidated tape. We would like ESMA to prioritize this report. The U.S. markets have such a tape, so we would consider to introduce one in the EU.”
He wants ESMA’s report on a tape by early 2020.
It is part of a wider battle between exchanges and their biggest customers over the price of share trading data, with big funds asking Brussels to intervene.
FESE, Europe’s exchanges industry body, published a report last month which it said showed bourses were not gouging customers with high charges.
The report also said that data vendors were already offering a de facto tape for prices on the bulk of the so-called “lit” exchanges, where prices and trades are instantly visible.
Dombrovskis said initial lessons could be drawn from MiFID.
“We intend to look at consumer protection issues, as well as take a deeper look at the operation of equities and bond markets,” he told EU lawmakers.
Asset managers have become less willing to pay as much for research for picking stocks to buy following MiFID II, which forces some brokers to scale back their coverage of small- and medium-sized (SME) companies.
“We will assess how the unbundling of investment research from brokerage has worked out, and whether we need to adjust this unbundling rule. We have been receiving a lot of complaints, especially on the SME side in this area,” Dombrovskis said.
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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The front page of Vogue magazine is seen in Athens, Greece, March 31, 2019. REUTERS/George Georgiopoulos
March 31, 2019
By George Georgiopoulos
ATHENS (Reuters) – Fashion magazine Vogue hit the newsstands in Greece on Sunday, relaunched after a seven-year absence as publishers bet that the country’s economic recovery after a debt crisis will revive an appetite for glossy fashion and lifestyle prints.
Vogue Greece will be the luxury magazine’s 26th international edition, run by a 29-year old editor-in-chief Thaleia Karafyllidou.
The fashion bible’s publisher Conde Nast International has teamed up with Kathimerines Ekdoseis and the monthly edition will be distributed with Sunday’s Kathimerini newspaper, which is celebrating 100 years in print in 2019.
It will also hit newsstands in Greece and Cyprus.
“Dear Vogue Greece, welcome back again,” Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief since 1988, wrote in the Greek comeback edition titled “Eyes on the future” and starring model Bella Hadid on its cover.
“Your return after years of absence fills us with joy. Greece faced problems and lived dramatic moments, I can only imagine how tough it was. However, the signs of recovery are now visible, even here in America.”
Vogue Hellas originally came out in Greece in March 2000, published by Lyberis Publications, one of the kings of glossy magazines in the 1990s that also produced popular, trend-setting titles such as Status, Life & Style and Glamour.
Lyberis went bankrupt in 2012 when advertising dried up during the economic crisis that sent the country’s unemployment to nearly 28 percent, dampening appetites for high fashion and lifestyle goods.
The relaunch will also have a digital edition as it bets on a successful return in a magazine market hurt by declining readership and advertisers.
Greece’s recovery after a lengthy recession that shrank its economy by a quarter remains on track. Last year, the economy expanded by 1.9 percent while unemployment has come down to 18 percent.
(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian)
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