Financial Times
March 13, 2011
When Yannis Costopoulos, the chairman of Alpha Bank, was summoned to the offices of National Bank of Greece on the morning of Tuesday January 18, he suspected a merger proposal might be on the table.
Greece’s government had for months been urging consolidation within the troubled banking sector – weakened both by the global financial crisis but more particularly by the country’s homegrown macroeconomic woes. And as the country’s biggest bank, partially state-owned NBG was always likely to be part of that drive.
But the way Alpha’s management tell it, NBG’s claim that this would be a friendly deal was fatally flawed from the outset. Handed an envelope as he left NBG’s offices after that first meeting, Mr Costopoulos was shocked to find fully fledged documentation, complete with terms, ready to be announced in press release form. A month later, that information was distributed to the market, while Alpha was sitting, unprepared, in its own board meeting.
“Right from the beginning, this was not a friendly approach,” says Spyros Filaretos, Alpha’s chief operating officer.
“NBG put out the statement. People were left to believe this was a done deal. It was a clumsy way to put pressure on us.”
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