AfE 2024
Piraeus Bank’s return to full private ownership this March was a landmark event in Greece’s long recovery after the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Its size, and the extent of its previous troubles, had demanded large injections of funds from Greece’s bailout vehicle, the Hellenic Financial Stabilization Fund (HFSF), during the crisis years.
But a €1.35 billion fully marketed offering this March, in which the HFSF sold its entire 27% stake in Piraeus, was several times oversubscribed and at a premium to the undisturbed price. It showed how far Piraeus has come in the last decade.
Successive acquisitions before and immediately after the sovereign debt crisis saw Piraeus became not just Greece’s biggest bank but also the one with the biggest non-performing loan problem, particularly concentrated in loans to small and medium-sized enterprises. In 2015, Piraeus then faced the biggest and hardest task of a series of capital raisings across the sector to cover capital shortfalls calculated by European Central Bank stress tests.
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