ATHENS, Greece
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A Greek national flag flutters atop the parliament building in Athens, Greece, January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 29, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s parliament approved on Friday a bill extending the protection of borrowers from foreclosures on their primary homes after tense negotiations with its international creditors.
The new framework, part of measures to expedite a clean up of bank balance sheets, was approved by a majority of lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament. It replaces an older scheme which international lenders considered more generous.
Athens hopes that Friday’s approval will help the country qualify for the transfer of about 1 billion euros from its euro zone lenders- mainly from profits that euro zone central banks have made on their Greek bond portfolios.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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Police officers stand outside the Russian consulate after an explosion, in Athens, Greece March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Costas Baltas
March 22, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Attackers on a motorcycle threw an explosive device, possibly a hand grenade, at the Russian consulate in Athens early on Friday, police said.
“It was probably a hand grenade. No one was injured,” a police official told Reuters, adding that it was not a powerful explosion.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the consulate in the Athens suburb of Chalandri, where police cordoned off the area.
In 2016, a security guard was wounded in a similar incident at the French embassy in central Athens.
Small-scale attacks on businesses, police, politicians and embassies are frequent in Greece, with its long history of political violence.
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Michael Perry and Darren Schuettler)
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FILE PHOTO: People make their way past the National Bank of Greece headquarters in central Athens, Greece, February 19, 2017. Picture taken February 19, 2017. REUTERS/Michalis Karagiannis
March 20, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece is planning to submit a bill to parliament on Friday to protect borrowers from home foreclosures, a government official said on Wednesday, though it is yet to secure the agreement of its lenders on its terms.
A wrangle over rules governing loans that have pledged a primary home as collateral helped delay the release of about 1 billion euros from Greece’s lenders, including the European Union and the European Central Bank, earlier this month.
The lenders, who are still monitoring Greece’s progress after it emerged from an international bailout seven months ago, want stricter terms than those proposed by Athens.
“Talks between the government and the supervisory institutions over the clarification of technical details will continue until Friday,” the official said, without clarifying if the government would submit the bill without securing lenders’ consent.
To conclude its second-post bailout review and qualify for the cash, Athens needs to get the green light from lenders before the new framework passes into law.
The issue is set to be discussed at a meeting of euro zone deputy finance ministers on Monday. A Commission representative said on Wednesday he is optimistic a deal can be reached before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on April 5.
Greece has been working on a new framework to succeed a law protecting borrowers from home foreclosures to accelerate the clean-up of bad loans burdening its banking sector, while protecting those hit by the crisis.
Its latest disagreement with lenders hinges on the scope of the new legal framework, including ceilings on primary home market values, income criteria to qualify for protection and the inclusion of small corporate loans.
A banker told Reuters on Wednesday that talks had reached a stalemate. Greece wanted to include a total of 11 billion euros in sour loans in the new scheme, while the lenders had capped the amount to 6-7 billion, another banker said.
Sour loans account for about 45 percent of banks’ overall loan book. The country has promised regulators it will take steps to shrink bad loans by more than a third by the end of 2019.
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Renee Maltezou and Jan Harvey)
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FILE PHOTO: A waitress issues a receipt at a cafe in Athens, Greece, June 25, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 18, 2019
By Justin George Varghese
(Reuters) – U.S. fintech group Fidelity National Information Services Inc (FIS) has agreed to buy payment processor Worldpay for about $35 billion, in the biggest deal to date in the booming payments industry.
The deal is the latest in a wave of consolidation in the financial software and payments technology sectors as firms bulk up to compete with newcomers seeking to disrupt the way merchants are paid.
U.S.-based Fiserv Inc bought payment processor First Data Corp in January for $22 billion. In Europe, startups such as Italy’s Nexi plan to list, capitalizing on booming interest in the industry fueled by surging online sales.
The FIS offer for Worldpay, which was bought by U.S. credit card processing company Vantiv in 2017 for $10.63 billion, values Worldpay at about $43 billion, when debt is included, the companies said on Monday.
Worldpay’s London listed shares were up 9.4 percent at 8,104 pence in early trading on Monday.
“Scale matters in our rapidly changing industry,” FIS Chief Executive Officer Gary Norcross said in a statement.
Worldpay shareholders will receive 0.9287 FIS shares and $11 in cash for each share held, valuing the company at $112.12 per share – a premium of about 14 percent based on the stocks’ Friday closing, according to Reuters calculations.
The combined entity will have revenue of about $12 billion, the companies said.
Upon closing, FIS shareholders will own about 53 percent and Worldpay shareholders about 47 percent of the combined company.
Worldpay, which has provided payment processing services for more than 40 years, operated as a business unit of Fifth Third Bancorp until June 2009 when it separated as a stand-alone company. It was spun out of RBS to private equity firms Bain Capital and Advent International in 2010.
The company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015, with an initial public offering valuing it at 4.8 billion pounds, the biggest flotation in London that year.
Centerview Partners and Goldman Sachs were financial advisers to FIS, the companies said, adding that Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as FIS’ legal adviser in the transaction.
(Reporting by Justin George Varghese and Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru and Rachel Armstrong in London; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Edmund Blair)
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People line up to register their assets at the land registry offices in Athens, Greece, March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Lefteris Papadimas
March 15, 2019
By Lefteris Papadimas
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece, the only European country without a proper register of land ownership, is confident it will finally have one in place by 2021 after spending hundreds of millions of euros on a project that began more than 20 years ago.
The lack of a complete record of property ownership across the country is a major barrier to investment, proper taxation and growth. It was once a buzzword for the bureaucratic morass of Greece, which was forced to request three international bailouts from 2010 to 2015 totaling 280 billion euros ($317 billion) to stay afloat.
On Wednesday, the country opened its biggest land registry office in Athens, home to nearly half of the Greek population.
The government hopes the new center will help speed up the process to compile a nationwide database as Athens residents will be able to register their assets in rural Greece without having to travel outside the capital.
The new registry is a 3,000 square meter (32,000-sq.ft) cavernous office complex to the north of Athens with a green metal roof that was built to host gymnastics events at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Staff at the new center and in smaller offices outside the capital aim to establish an electronic database that will cover the whole country by 2021, a deadline agreed with Greece’s foreign creditors.
Concluding the project has been a condition of each of Athens’ three bailouts, the last of which expired last August.
“(Preparations) are now at their peak, we are optimistic that it will be completed by 2021,” Aria Ioannidi, manager of the project, told Reuters from the new office.
While that is still two years away, it marks progress for a project that was launched in 1998 by the socialist government of then Prime Minister Costas Simitis.
When Athens applied for its first international bailout in 2010, Greece and Albania were the only two countries in Europe that lacked a computerized register of land ownership and usage. Albania has since introduced one.
In Greece, only about 30 percent of titles deeds have been electronically registered, hampered by a lack of offices and infrastructure.
Some Greeks believe that without pressure from its international lenders Greece would not have even progressed that far.
“If we didn’t have the troika (of lenders) to put pressure on us it would have taken us another 10 years to finish it,” an official who participates in the project told Reuters.
More than 3,000 people have already signed up to register assets at the new Athens registry.
Many Greeks, though, are not happy with the process. Years of austerity has already tested their patience and the prospect of further red tape and accompanying expenses is stirring anger.
“It’s costly and time-consuming, I’m here since early morning and I haven’t finished yet,” says 67-year old Athanasios Theos, holding a paper bag full of documents.
“We registered our home and some land plots decades ago in the tax offices, we are paying property tax since day one and now they are asking us for more money to register them here.”
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks during his meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (not pictured) at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 15, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales, a supporter of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, said on Friday European nations should support a dialogue within the country.
“History has taught that there have been many interventions from the outside, such as the case of Libya and Iraq, and they never offered a solution”, Morales said in translated comments after meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during an official visit in Athens.
“On the contrary it abolished democracy,” he said.
(Reporting By Renee Maltezou, writing by Angeliki Koutantou and Michele Kambas)
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FILE PHOTO – A Greek national flag flutters atop the parliament building in Athens, Greece, January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 12, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece needs to press ahead with unfinished economic reforms to cut risks to its recovery in the medium term, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in its first report since the country exited its third bailout.
Under the terms of Greece’s exit seven months ago the Washington-based Fund, which took part in the first two bailouts, and its euro zone lenders are continuing to monitor its compliance with economic targets they set.
The IMF expects Greece’s economy to grow 2.4 percent this year and 2.2 percent in 2020 before slowing in subsequent years, it said, reiterating projections it made two months ago.
Growth will be helped by stronger consumption this year after an 11 percent hike in the minimum wage, the first such increase since the crisis began. Greece took its first bailout in 2010.
But rising wage pressures and the reversal of labor reforms may hit employment in a country whose the jobless rate stands at 18 percent, and the banking sector remains vulnerable, the IMF added.
“Greece should reconsider recent changes in collective bargaining policies and press ahead with its unfinished reform agenda,” the IMF said.
It should cut taxes to facilitate growth and proceed with a planned broadening of the personal income tax base.
The latter has been expected to kick in next year but the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras, whose term ends in October, has said the measure will be annulled if it wins re-election.
The government has announced austerity-easing measures since the bailout program ended in August, but polls show the conservative New Democracy party is widening its lead over Tsipras’ Syriza party.
The IMF says the country must also prepare for possible fiscal risks, including increased budget costs due to legal challenges to past wage and pension cuts, reform fatigue and pre-election uncertainty.
Euro zone finance ministers could grant Greece close to 1 billion euros in April if Athens completes reforms agreed with creditors by then. So far, it has completed 13 of 16 promised reforms, the European Commission said.
Greece, which has tapped bond markets twice this year, has created a substantial cash buffer, the IMF said, adding that the country can service its debt through the end of 2022 without further market financing.
Its capacity to repay the Fund is currently “assessed to be adequate”, but if fiscal risks materialize, that capacity “could become challenged over the medium term”, the IMF said.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; editing by John Stonestreet)
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FILE PHOTO: People line up at an ATM outside a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece June 29, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 12, 2019
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The European Union’s top court on Tuesday denied access to a key European Central Bank document which underpinned its decision to freeze vital funding to Greek banks in 2015, a turning point in the country’s financial crisis.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and German parliamentarian Fabio De Masi had requested access to a legal opinion informing the ECB decision, which they say was illegitimate and aimed at forcing Athens to cave in during bailout negotiations with its lenders.
But the EU’s General Court said the ECB was right to deny access to the document in order to protect its “space to think”.
“Contrary to the applicants’ claim, the ECB could legitimately take into account the hypothetical effects that the disclosure of the contested document could have on its space to think in 2015 and also after 2015,” the three judges said in their ruling.
Varoufakis and De Masi have two months to appeal the verdict.
The ECB decision to freeze the amount of emergency cash it was providing to Greek banks forced Alexis Tsipras’ government to temporarily close them and impose capital controls, sinking the Greek economy and weakening his negotiating position during heated talks with international lenders.
Eventually, hard-liner Varoufakis resigned and Tsipras struck a deal with the EU that gave Greece cash in return for austerity measures and reforms.
The document requested by Varoufakis and De Masi relates to the granting of Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) by the Eurosystem, which includes the ECB and national central banks
After their request was rejected by the ECB, the pair turned to the EU’s General Court.
The ECB was not immediately available for comment but a spokesman said previously that the legal opinion preceded the decision to withhold funding by at least two months, adding the ECB decided not to disclose it to protect its legal advisers and its internal deliberations.
The ECB’s Agreement on ELA, published in 2017, prohibits national central banks from providing emergency cash if it threatens price stability or payments in the euro zone’s monetary system.
(Reporting By Francesco Canepa and Frank Siebelt; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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A Greek national flag flutters atop the parliament building in Athens, Greece, January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
February 27, 2019
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Greece has not made enough progress in reforms agreed last year to get a 750 million euro ($854.4 million) bonus from the euro zone, but could still complete the changes before the bloc’s finance ministers discuss the issue on March 11, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
Greece struck a debt relief deal with euro zone creditors last June to continue various reforms even after its third bailout program ended in August. The Commission has the task of monitoring the reform progress.
In return, Athens is to get 750 million euros every six months. The money is part of about 4.8 billion euros of profits from Greek bonds held by the euro zone that is to be handed back to Athens by mid-2022 and from a waiver of the step-up interest rate margin on part of the euro zone loans.
“Concerning Greece, the second Enhanced Surveillance Report … shows significant progress but also some areas in which further efforts are needed, and I urge the authorities to complete these in time for the next Eurogroup,” European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici said in a statement.
There are 16 various reforms at different stages of completion, but the key ones were linked to the clearance of government arrears – the roll-out of a primary healthcare system and centralized healthcare procurement and the legal framework for non-performing loan resolution, in particular the household insolvency law.
(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
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A man reads a newspaper at a coffee shop in central Athens, Greece, November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Costas Baltas
February 27, 2019
By Francesco Guarascio
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Half of European Union countries are experiencing economic imbalances that differ widely, the EU Commission said on Wednesday, as the bloc discusses how to improve convergence among its 27 members after Britain leaves.
In a regular check-up of EU governments’ economic policies and achievements, the Commission renewed its warning that gaps that are harmful to the whole bloc not being addressed in several states, while a growing number of them face shortfalls.
As economic growth slows, “challenges vary significantly across countries and call for appropriate and determined policy action,” the Commission said in its report.
Thirteen states were rebuked for their economic imbalances, two more than in last year’s assessment.
Of them, Italy, Greece and Cyprus were found to have “excessive” shortfalls which would require swift corrective action. The Commission was mostly worried by the high ratio of bad loans in their banking sectors and their large public and private debt.
Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden also have imbalances although less acute than the three Mediterranean states, the commission said. Croatia’s imbalances are no longer considered excessive.
None of these countries have sufficiently narrowed the gaps the Commission had highlighted in a report last year, in a sign that EU’s fiscal recommendations have so far been largely ignored in national capitals.
Problems also differ among countries, with France affected by low productivity, Italy hit by high unemployment and debt and Germany lagging on investments.
CASH FOR REFORMS?
The EU monitoring was launched after the 2008-09 global financial crisis to address national economic imbalances that could weaken the EU economy.
However, major shortfalls have not been tackled by EU states. For example, Italy’s large public sector debt has not dropped and Germany has maintained an excessive trade surplus.
Structural reforms have also stalled in recent years in many countries of the bloc. “To unlock the full growth potential of our economies, we need structural reforms,” the Commission’s vice-president in charge of financial stability Valdis Dombrovskis said in a statement.
In a bid to address these shortfalls and lower economic divergences among EU states, the Commission last year proposed to set up a 25-billion-euro ($28.4 billion) EU fund to help countries that embark on structural reforms, such as of their pensions systems or labor markets.
Germany and France, the two largest countries of the bloc, supported the cash-for-reform plan in a blueprint agreed last week, but a fund will only be set up if there is backing from all EU states. Not all countries support the plan.
If agreed, the fund could begin financing reforms from 2021 when the new long-term EU budget will start.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
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