Greece to Sell ‘Significant’ Stake in Piraeus Bank in Months

Sotiris Nikas and Paul Tugwell
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Greece is planning to sell a large portion of its stake in Piraeus Bank SA soon, according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who added that the country was in the beginning of a long-term growth cycle.

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“We can expect news on Piraeus Bank soon,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Francine Lacqua in Davos Friday. “We need more competition in the banking sector,” he said, adding that they still need to decide if the state will sell part or all of its 27% stake in the lender.

Greece’s economic growth in 2023 is expected to outperform most of the country’s European peers, boosted by another strong year for the key tourism sector. During the second half of 2023, Greece managed to regain the investment grade status that it had lost almost 14 years earlier as it was entering into its decade-long debt crisis.

The country now has to balance its fiscal prudence with sustainable growth, the premier said. The government is pushing a privatization plan that will help reduce Greece’s debt burden that remains one of the highest in Europe, despite falling sharply in the past two years.

In “the first months of 2024,” the country will also proceed with an initial public offering for a 30% stake in Athens International Airport, the nation’s largest, Mitsotakis said. The move aims to raise as much as €1 billion ($1.1 billion).

Athens is already moving ahead with its plan to divest from Greek lenders. During Greece’s bailouts, the country had to inject money to save its banks. Now the government wants to leave the sector by the end of 2025. The Hellenic Financial Stability Fund — a bank recapitalization tool established at the start of Greece’s bailout programs — has already fully exited from Eurobank Ergasias Services and Holdings SA and Alpha Bank SA.

In November, it also sold a 22% holding in National Bank of Greece, raising more than €1 billion. For 2024, the government expects to receive €5.77 billion from privatizations, compared to last year’s €406.4 million.

Same-Sex Marriage

Mitsotakis also said he plans to move faster on a 2023 pledge to introduce a same-sex marriage law to parliament. The premier has made clear however that the new law will not allow male same-sex couples to use surrogacy to have a child. The legislation will mainly focus on eliminating any discrimination based on sexual orientation in marriage.

The draft law “will be submitted to the next cabinet meeting next week,” Mitsotakis said.

Since 2019 when Mitsotakis first took office, his government introduced a number of reforms to advance LGBTQ rights. Like most European states, Greece allows same-sex civil unions, but this doesn’t automatically come with the same adoption rights and parental recognition.

The new bill will foresee that if a man with an adopted child marries another man, both will be recognized as parents. Full parental rights will be given to the non-biological parent in couples that already have children. In Greece, single men have been allowed to adopt children since 1946.

Mitsotakis will need support from other parties as many of his conservative party lawmakers have opposed the same-sex marriage initiative, including Minister of State Makis Voridis and former Premier Antonis Samaras. Still, the bill is expected to be approved by the 300-seat parliament with the support of all or part of leftist Syriza and socialist Pasok lawmakers.

“I’m very optimistic that it will become Greek law within the first two weeks of the month of February,” Mitsotkais said.

--With assistance from John Follain.

(Updates with more interview details from the fifth paragraph.)

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