Greece

Greek jewellery maker Folli Follie is in talks with three bondholders hoping to firm up a restructuring plan “within days”, a senior company source told Reuters on Friday. The step is key for the company, which has debt of about 430 million euros due this year and in 2021, to avoid collapse, Reuters reported. Along with its luxury jewellery trademark, Folli distributes international apparel brands in Greece, including Nike and Calvin Klein. It employs 5,000 people in its home market and abroad, including in China and Japan.

Greece plans to pump as much as 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) into its banks over the next five years by subsidizing a part of households’ mortgage repayments, Bloomberg News reported. Under the plan, some households unable to repay their home loans will restructure their debts with the banks, with the state then paying part of the remaining monthly installments, according to three people familiar with plan, who asked not to be named as details still need to be finalized. Greek banks are grappling with 88.6 billion euros of bad loans, a legacy of the country’s financial crisis.

Greek lender Alpha Bank is preparing two non-performing loan sales that could remove as much as 3.5 billion euros ($4 billion) of bad debt from its balance sheet, according to two people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg News reported. One of the portfolios, dubbed Neptune, comprises 1.5 billion euros of loans secured against assets of small and medium-sized enterprises, the people said, asking not to be named because the plans aren’t public. The bank is considering securitizing the debt but may also sell the loans outright, one of the people said.

Greece announced plans to return to bond markets and increase the minimum wage Monday, amid protests against bailout-era measures by farmers who used tractors to block the country's main highway. Authorities unveiled plans to issue a 5-year bond, a first market test since the end of Greece's international bailout in August. In a televised address, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the minimum wage would be increased by nearly 10 percent starting next month — from 586 euros per month to 650 euros, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

Representatives of Greece's bailout creditors are in Athens to review progress on measures demanded in return for relief on the country's massive national debt, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The inspectors started meetings Tuesday with senior government officials to review issues including delayed privatization projects, a plan to help banks reduce a high amount of non-performing loans, and measures to protect low-income families from property foreclosures.

This week’s collapse of Greece’s coalition government comes at a delicate time for the country’s suffering financial sector, the Financial Times reported. Over the weekend Alexis Tsipras, prime minister, called a confidence vote in his government after Panos Kammenos, defence minister, resigned in protest over a deal with Macedonia to end a dispute over its name. If the Syriza government loses, there will be early elections. This would, temporarily at least, disrupt plans for government involvement in much-needed bank reform.

Greece’s Public Power Corp (PPC) will continue to supply debt-laden Larco, Europe’s biggest nickel producer, with electricity until next month, extending a previous deadline which expires later on Monday, Reuters reported. Larco, which is 55 percent owned by the Greek state, owes about 280 million euros ($319 million) in unpaid electricity bills to state-controlled power utility PPC, also a minority shareholder in the company.

Famar, a contract manufacturer to pharmaceutical industries, has completed a 174 million euro ($197 million) debt restructuring and secured new funds from private equity-backed Pillarstone to strengthen its capital position, Reuters reported. Pillarstone is a platform set up by private equity firm KKR and John Davison in 2015 to partner with European banks to create value by managing their on-balance sheet non-core assets. Pillarstone’s Greek subsidiary has been licensed by the Bank of Greece to provide long-term capital to large corporate borrowers and manage banks’ sour loans.

Greece has quietly postponed a landmark bond sale after the prolonged sell-off in Italy’s bond market pushed up its cost of raising new debt, the Financial Times reported. The nation’s leftwing Syriza government had hoped to issue a benchmark 10-year bond within a few weeks of the country’s exit from its €86bn third bailout in August, as a signal to investors that Greece had returned to normalcy.

Greece’s Eurobank Ergasias SA isn’t waiting around for a state rescue, with a plan to sell about 7 billion euros ($8 billion) of troubled loans and merge with a real estate fund, Bloomberg News reported. As part of the plan, the bank will merge with real estate fund Grivalia Properties REIC to create a new business named Eurobank, the two companies said. It will then shift non-performing debt to a separate vehicle that will issue senior, mezzanine and junior notes that the bank will initially retain. Some of the lower level notes would then be sold off to investors.