Foreign investors keep upper hand in Greek stocks in tough 2018

Euronext Athens Holding SA

13/02/2019 15:12

ATHENS, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Foreign investors accounted for
more than half of total trading activity on Greece's stock
market last year, executives at stock and futures operator
Hellenic Exchanges  EXCr.AT  said on Wednesday.
    Greek equities fell 23.6 percent in 2018, a tough year in
which banks took a beating. But mid-cap shares bucked the
downtrend for a second straight year.
    "It was the year of mid-caps," Socrates Lazaridis, CEO at
Hellenic Exchanges told reporters. "But for the first time, the
market capitalisation of banks fell below 10 percent of the
stock market's total capitalisation."
    Greece's five listed banks have struggled to shrink their
mountains of bad loans and return to sustained profitability. 
    Foreign investors held 22.3 billion euros ($25.2 billion) of
Greek stocks or 63.3 percent of total market capitalisation,
which fell to 45 billion euros at the end of 2018 from 54.1
billion in 2017.
    Foreign funds accounted for 56 percent of total trading
activity last year, or 7.8 billion euros, executives said.
    Fund raising on the Greek bourse totalled just 450 million
euros via four new corporate bond issues and only one new
listing.
    Hellenic Exchanges, which is 60 percent owned by foreign
funds, is preparing infrastructure for a new electricity
exchange which authorities plan to launch later this year,
executives said.
     

($1 = 0.8864 euros)

 (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos)
 ((george.georgiopoulos@thomsonreuters.com; +30210 337 6437;
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