The crisis that started in the United States in 2007-2008, hit the European Union head on in 2008, and has been causing major problems in the eurozone since 2010. [1]| Banks from the strongest European countries are responsible for spreading this plague from the United States to Europe, because they had invested massively in structured financial products. It is important to explain why this crisis has struc ...

National Bank of Greece, the country's largest lender, is close to clinching a deal to sell a majority stake in its fully-owned real estate arm Pangaia to private equity firm Invel Real Estate, two bankers close to the deal told Reuters on Sunday. ...

ATHENS — In an era when central bankers like Ben S. Bernanke dominate the global economic stage, few hold as much power within their own country as Georgios A. Provopoulos, the governor of the Bank of Greece, who has played a crucial role in keeping Greece out of bankruptcy and in the euro zone. But now Mr. Provopoulos faces one of the bigger challenges of his tumultuous reign: an investigation into whether ...

ATHENS, June 28 (Reuters) - Greece's bank rescue fund has hired Rothschild and Goldman Sachs as advisers on the sale of lenders Proton and Hellenic Postbank (TT), which are most likely to be bought by bigger Greek banks, officials told Reuters on Friday. ...

(Reuters) - The chairman of one of Greece's largest banks and his family took out loans totaling more than 100 million euros to finance an undisclosed stake in the bank, according to audit documents seen by Reuters. Offshore companies owned by Michael Sallas and his two children paid for shares in the Piraeus Bank, the country's fourth-biggest, by borrowing money from a rival bank. Together the shares make ...

UPDATED! Critical Thinking and Freedom of Speech is not one of the goals of SEFA With the occasion of having Mr. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, participating in the “Room for Discussion” event, the Student Association for Economics and Business (SEFA) of University of Amsterdam avoided any opportunity to expose tomorrow's economists to critical and diverse thinking. Mr Draghi gave a r ...

Repost from  FT Alphaville Raise your hand if you didn’t first hear about the way in which the Dutch government took over ailing SNS Reaal on February 1st and think ‘oh, really now?’ along with an arched eyebrow. The mechanics of the takeover are interesting indeed, but given that two of the four largest Dutch banks have been nationalised, we have a bigger picture question: How much warning was there that S ...

Angry Cypriots try in vain to withdraw savings as eurozone bailout terms break taboo of hitting bank depositors. European finance ministers have agreed an £8.7bn bailout for Cypruswhich includes all Cypriot bank customers handing over up to 10% of their savings. Cyprus becomes the fifth country after Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to turn to the eurozone for financial help amid the region's debt crisis ...

No subsidy for empty buildings Friday February the 1st the SNS bank was nationalised. When we are continuously told that there is no money and that cuts to public services are necessary it turns out that there is still 3.7 billion euro left to save a bank and its extensive real estate portfolio. For years trees grew to the sky and no building project was too much for SNS. Now tax payers have to pay the bill ...

Athens LIKE many Greeks caught in the maelstrom of the economic crisis, my wife and I live a day-to-day existence. Since the newspaper where I worked for 23 years (my wife for 17) went out of circulation in December of 2011, we have both been unemployed. Neither of us have received a paycheck in 18 months, as our newspaper stopped paying us five months before it closed. With unemployment for journalists at ...