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17 Greek public companies will meet with 90 foreign investment funds in New York in early June, reports Imerisia. The meetings are planned within the privatisation campaign by which the PASOK government hopes to raise about 50 billion euros by 2015 to significantly reduce its foreign debt. The business contacts in New York are expected to bring another positive result, namely the revival of the Athens Stock Exchange which marked a significant drop after the peak of the economic crisis.
 
The Greek companies that will take part in the meetings are among the 20^th largest and most successful companies on the Athens Stock Exchange and are included in the FTSE/ATHEX 20 index. Some of the largest banks in the country are among them, which economic analysts perceive as the first sign of inviting foreign strategic investors to the local financial market. The government and the Bank of Greece have been urging the Greek banks to restructure and strengthen their capital more than a year. Apart from the increased capital of several Greek financial institutions so far, no real mergers have been made. The lack of serious reforms and restructuring of the Greek financial system is attributed to the uncertainty concerning the future of the local economy. However, this is expected to change very soon after the supervisory Troika announces its conclusion for the development of the Greek economy by the end of this month.

A good example to be followed turned out to be the purchase of Piraeus Bank’s shares worth € 23,500,000 by the Czech PPF Group. Thus, it increased its stake in the Greek bank by 2.06% and it reached 5.72%. The President of Piraeus Mihalos Sallas did not miss to note that this small step is an example of how Greece and its banking system could gradually regain the lost confidence.
 
The Athens Stock Exchange is expected to play a decisive role in the process of privatisation and restructuring of the economic state of the country and this requires its stabilisation. In this respect, its President Sokratis Lazaridis announced a series of changes which he would like to introduce to ensure the better operation of the Stock Exchange. First, Lazaridis will remove the 'average' and 'great' levels of capitalization of the companies and will determine a single category for all. The proposals made by the President of the Athens Stock Exchange that are seriously opposed are the increasing the number of the companies in the main FTSE index from 20 to 25 and the reduction of the capital requirements from 1 billion euros to 750 million euros. The Greek companies listed on the Stock Exchange do not support the Lazaridis’ proposal all companies to provide information in English in order to strengthen the integration of smaller companies and foreign markets.