Greek bank shares hit as deposits flee

Financial Times
January 27, 2015

Greek banks suffered a second day of double digit share price declines as the country’s biggest lenders are set to tap emergency central bank lending to mitigate the effects of accelerating deposit flight.

The country’s four biggest lenders — Piraeus, Alpha Bank, Eurobank and National Bank of Greece — have each seen more than a fifth of their market capitalisation wiped out this week as the banking sector continues to bear the brunt of an electoral fallout dragging down the rest of the Athens bourse, which declined by 3 per cent.

“This is a massacre,” said one senior Athens-based banker. “Markets are panicking . . . They’re trying to pre-empt a crisis on banks’ liquidity. They know the crisis will be centred around the banks.”

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