Greece’s main stock exchange in Athens will reopen on Monday after being closed for five weeks by the Greek debt crisis after the government imposed capital controls, a finance ministry source told AFP.
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The Athens Exchange will reopen on Monday, the head of the Capital Market Commission, Costas Botopoulos, said late on Wednesday in an interview with state broadcaster ERT.
Traders and exchange officials had hoped the exchange would be able to reopen this week after the European Central Bank gave Greece the green light to allow normal operations by foreign investors with some limits for local investors.
The Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) has been shut since June 29, when the government closed banks and imposed strict limits on withdrawals and foreign transfers to prevent a run on deposits by savers and companies.
Greece has begun negotiating the details of its third bailout with worldwide creditors this week.
Once the market reopens it will have the new stock of blue chip Viohalco listed, following the absorption of Sidenor, as Hellenic Exchanges decided this week. A report in Sunday’s Avgi newspaper, which is close to Tsipras’ government, suggested Athens is seeking around 10 billion euros ($11 billion) this month for bank recapitalisation.
Local investors will be allowed to buy with existing cash holdings, but not to withdraw fresh capital from their bank accounts, or borrow. “There was convergence on some issues, less on others”.
Also Friday, Tsipras in parliament defended Syriza member and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has been hit with a flurry of lawsuits over his role in preparing a contingency plan in the event Greece was forced to leave the euro. Varoufakis had alleged that the aim would have been to create a parallel banking system to deal with a potential closure of the country’s banks.
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Mr Varoufakis may have made mistakes, he said.
