July 30th, 2010
Greece is determined to show it can outperform tough fiscal targets set by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, said George Papaconstantinou, finance minister. But the government still faces strong resistance to structural reforms – from opening up closed-shop professions such as truck driving to cutting about 50,000 jobs in ...
July 29th, 2010
Like so many other official attempts to extinguish the Continent’s sovereign debt crisis, the bank stress tests whose results were announced Friday struck critics as timid, inadequate and overloaded with compromise — typical Europe, in other words. But also like so many other European initiatives, it seemed Monday to somehow be ...
July 28th, 2010
Piraeus Bank , a private Greek lender that barely scraped through the European stress tests, is planning to raise fresh capital later this year, one of its senior executives said on Sunday. A capital increase of at least €1.1bn would be linked to an offer by Piraeus last week to acquire ...
July 27th, 2010
Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday expressed Greece’s full support for Nicosia’s efforts to revive peace talks on the divided island of Cyprus and called on Turkish Cypriots to be more cooperative to ensure sputtering negotiations remain on track. At a time of increased tension in the Aegean, where Turkish vessels and ...
July 26th, 2010
Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou expressed confidence in the Greek banking sector Friday after the announcement of the results of stress tests on Greek banks. Six Greek banks took part in the stress tests conducted by European Union experts on 91 European banks in total, among which only ATEbank failed. Experts of ...
July 23rd, 2010
Spain, Ireland and Greece successfully tapped bond markets on Tuesday in a sign that European efforts to calm an immediate crisis over government debt have taken hold. The three countries are considered among the most vulnerable of the 16 nations that use the euro, with high levels of government spending and ...
July 22nd, 2010
Greece's finance minister said Monday he was confident the country's banks will fare well in EU-wide stress tests that aim to find potential vulnerabilities in the financial sector. Six Greek banks, which make up about 90 percent of the country's market, are among the 91 banks undergoing stress tests by the ...
July 21st, 2010
The International Monetary Fund on Friday said Greece was making progress toward putting its public finances on a sustainable path, and its economy was declining "as expected." In an interim report based on its mid-June staff visit to Athens, the Fund said Greece's budget implementation was on track, but pointed to ...
July 20th, 2010
Average real estate prices in Greece fell 7.7% in the first quarter of 2010 from a year earlier as the country steers through its first recession in over a decade. As the country struggles to over come its debt problems it is perhaps no surprise that property is not immune ...
July 19th, 2010
German bonds fell after Greece sold six-month securities at a lower interest rate than some analysts expected, easing demand for the region’s safest assets. The decline pushed bund yields up from near the lowest in a week as Greece sold 26-week bills at a rate of 4.65 percent. Padhraic Garvey, a ...
