Hercules helps lift Greek NPL sales

摘要

Greece's banks are lining up sales of big portfolios of bad assets, lifting optimism they could offload almost €30bn of non-performing loans this year despite a delay to deals caused by the coronavirus crisis. Eurobank this month securitised and offloaded a €7.5bn book of NPLs and pireaus and alpha bank are trying to sell mega-portfolios to give a kick-start to one of the biggest problems in European banking. Greek banks had about €70bn of NPLs at the end of last year, representing 35.2% of their assets, well above any other EU country, the European Banking Authority estimated. But at least €20bn of that NPL mountain and possibly more could be cut this year if deals in the pipeline get sealed and are added to some smaller books. Bankers said that would give a big boost to banks and also the government, which has belatedly set up a scheme to help.