Piraeus chiefs in Nicosia for talks next week

PIRAEUS Bank’s top brass will be meeting with Central Bank governor and the Finance Minister early next week in Nicosia, it was reported yesterday.

Greece’s fourth largest lender, Piraeus holds a stake of just under 10 per cent in the Bank of Cyprus. But its recent cash-and-stock offer to take over the bank was rejected by BoC’s board.
Piraeus Bank is currently tendering to acquire at least 40 per cent of Marfin Popular Bank. Marfin made a rival bid for Piraeus and the Bank of Cyprus, which was ruled invalid by the local securities regulator.

Executives of the Greek bank, including CEO Michalis Sallas, will reportedly also be meeting with Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Giorgos Charalambous and Akis Kleanthous, chairman of the Cyprus stock exchange.

This week, the SEC put a damper on Marfin’s bid to acquire Piraeus and BoC. In a case described as “unparalleled”, the regulatory body imposed a £10,000 fine on Marfin for breaching stock exchange regulations, though it added that the bank did not do so in bad faith.
The SEC’s ruling was widely seen as a setback – if only temporary – for Marfin and its CEO Andreas Vgenopoulos, who is proposing to create a market leader in Greece and among the top 25 banks in Europe, with some 1,000 branches in 17 countries, total assets worth 97 billion euros and a credit of 54 billion euros.

Meanwhile, regulatory authorities in Greece are said to be looking into comments made by Piraeus’ Michalis Sallas, who apparently bragged to colleagues in private that he would “take Vgenopoulos’ bank away from him within a month”.

The alleged comments were carried by Athens daily To Vima. Although Sallas subsequently denied making the comments, the racket provoked the intervention of Greece’s Finance Minister, who called on all parties to demonstrate the “necessary seriousness and responsibility”.
The media in Greece have often portrayed Sallas and Vgenopoulos as bitter personal rivals.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.