A European Union-funded bank bailout vehicle said on Friday it had raised just over €1bn ($1.08bn) from the sale of a 22% stake in the National Bank of Greece — one of the country’s biggest lenders, which also has a considerable shipping portfolio.
The Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) did not identify the buyers.
However, it is widely expected that no single private anchor shareholder has emerged to wield a dominant influence over the lender.
The HFSF will most likely remain the bank’s single biggest shareholder with an 18% stake. The rest of the bank’s shareholding is widely dispersed.
The lender had a shipping portfolio of €2.7bn as of 30 September, up from €1.7bn at the end of 2020. This is about a tenth of its total performing loans, which stood at €29.6bn at the end of the third quarter.
According to a statement on Friday, the HFSF sold about 201.2m National Bank shares in an open tender at €5.30 apiece. This lies towards the higher side of the €5.00-to-€5.44 price range that it was planning to sell.
Non-Greek investors picked up four-fifths of the shares sold on Friday, with the balance going to Hellenic retail and institutional buyers.
In a sign of strong buying interest amid upbeat prospects for the Greek economy, prospective investors inscribed offers to buy eight times the volume of National Bank of Greece shares the Greek special purpose vehicle put under the hammer.
Upbeat prospects
The EU bailout fund has been capitalising on such interest to cash out from lenders it saved during Greece's sovereign debt crisis about 10 years ago.
As TradeWinds already reported, the HFSH sold on Monday a 9% stake in Athens-based Alpha Bank to Italy’s UniCredit for €293m.
Alpha Bank claims to be the biggest Greece-based maritime lender with a portfolio of €3.1bn at the end of September.
No Greek bank currently subscribes to the Global Maritime Forum’s Poseidon Principles for sustainable ship lending.
