Galery

1

The trend of "escape" of companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange is continuing this year too whereas, at the same time, four years without a new company listed on it have passed.

The stock exchange board, although it is being updated unilaterally, showing the delisted companies, on the one hand indicates that the number of the companies listed up until 2008 (295 companies) was too high. On the other hand, there is no reason for all those listed companies to be displayed on the board, as the market reports that over 35 companies are not involved in the stock market operations for various reasons (mainly due to economic deadlock), which is leading to significant losses in the portfolios of investors.

The "self-clearing" of the market has created an unpleasant phenomenon. Mainly good companies listed in the 1990s are leaving the stock exchange, as no investors want to participate in their capital increase due to the recession, which has been continuing for six years already. In addition, the banks have reduced to a minimum the granting of business loans after the recapitalization. The recent public offering of shares of the holding company of Athens Medical Centre, submitted by its founder and chairman George Apostolopoulous, is raising again the issue of the delisting of companies. The purpose of Apostolopoulous is to become the majority shareholder and the acquisition of 90% of the share capital will enable him to take advantage of the so-called squeeze out option and to delist the shares from the stock board after 23 years of presence in the stock market (the company was listed on 29 August 1991). It became clear yesterday that, after the acquisition of 1,408,223 shares of the company at a price of 0.80 euro per share through stock transactions that would end on 14 August 2013, George Apostolopoulous already holds 34.923% compared to the previous 33.299%.

A key role in the success of the public offering will be played by the position of the German firm Asklepios International GMBH, which owns 30.72% of the holding as of 5 August.

The journalist organization Lambraki was the last company which had delisted its shares (the trading of shares was suspended on 26 July), thus increasing the number of the companies which have delisted their shares from the stock exchange in 2013 to seven.

The companies which have delisted their shares from the stock exchange since the beginning of the year are as follows: Ipotour (11 February), Olympic Catering (11 February), Zambia (14 June), Altious Investment (25 June), Eurodrip (12 July), S & B (12 July). The following companies have applied for delisting in 2013: Microland, Kardasilaris which is a company trading in nuts and dried fruits, Petzetakis and Teksapret. The management of the stock exchange and the Capital Market Commission have determined for them a term within which they have to eliminate the reasons for the delisting of their shares. The companies are required to publish half-yearly reports on the progress of the actions which they have pledged to perform in order for them to inform the investors.

The following companies delisted their shares in 2012: Sciens (11 July), Interfish (30 July), Euroline (13 August), Elfiko (2 November) Evrosimetohes (2 November) and Elbisco (28 November).

The number of delisted companies in 2011 was 9 and 11 in 2010. In 2009, when the crisis in Greece began in fact, four companies had delisted their shares due to the public offering of securities (Piraeus Leasing, Grigoris Mikrogevmata, H. Rokas and Multirama) and another four because of the economic deadlock (Gener, Elatex, Ergas , ΕΤΜΑ). Let us recall that 2006 was the year with the largest number of delisted companies (41).