Greece

A rescue fund set up to help euro-using countries paid its final 15 billion-euro ($17.3 billion) bailout loan to Greece on Monday after objections by Germany delayed the payment by several weeks, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The European Stability Mechanism said 9.5 billion euros (nearly $11 billion) of the loan would go toward a cash buffer Greece could use to meet its financial needs for almost two years. The other 5.5 billion euros ($6.4 billion) was earmarked for paying off some of the country's considerable debt.

The International Monetary Fund has warned eurozone governments that they need to give Greece more long-term debt relief to stop the country from being locked out of financial markets as Athens prepares for life outside a bailout programme, the Financial Times reported. In a swipe at EU capitals that have pushed back at Greek demands for greater debt relief, the IMF has calculated that Greece’s long-term debt costs will be unsustainable in 20 years’ time because of the high budget surplus targets demanded by European creditors as part of Athens’ post-bailout conditions.  Wit

Greece is planning a return to the markets in a bid to regain its status as a “normal” country. If the government can announce by the end of the year its program for tapping the markets in 2019, and repeat this exercise each year for the following 12 months, the plan will have worked, an official familiar with the matter said. After losing more than a quarter of its economic output during the past decade, Europe’s most indebted country is now trying to stand on its own feet again, Bloomberg News reported.

Greece is scheduled to exit its marathon bailout this summer after hitting the tough fiscal targets set by its creditors. But the country has done so by raising taxes so high that they are strangling the small businesses that form the backbone of its economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. At the Dandy restaurant in downtown Athens, owner Charalampos Bonatsos said rising taxes have forced him to lay off half his staff and cut his remaining workers’ wages. He said he still struggles to cope with the last three years’ increases in corporate income tax, property tax and sales tax.

Rebel shareholders narrowly won a vote to oust the entire board of Ellaktor, Greece’s largest construction company, at Wednesday’s annual meeting in Athens, the Financial Times reported. According to the final count of proxy votes, 52.92 per cent of votes cast were in favour of a new nine-member board to be headed by Georgios Provopoulos, a former central bank governor, as chairman, while 47.08 per cent backed the current board led by Dimitris Koutras, a co-founder of Ellaktor and Leonidas Bobolas, head of the company’s construction concessions arm.

Once the outcast of European bond markets, Greece appears firmly on the road to redemption. After years of austerity, the expiry of an 86 billion euro ($100 billion) bailout in August will mark the end of an era in which Greece defaulted, 10-year yields topped 40 percent and the country came perilously close to being kicked out of the euro, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Even if he wins the battle for control of Ellaktor SA, Leonidas Bobolas plans to make way for new leadership at Greece’s biggest construction company, Bloomberg News reported. Bobolas hopes his move will help to end a bitter internal dispute over how to revive the firm that’s lost millions of euros in recent years and seen its share performance lag behind peers. Ellaktor’s chairman Anastasios Kallitsantsis quit last month to launch a campaign to replace top management, but Bobolas says the company had already hired consultants to reorganize its governance structure when that happened.

European Commission officials say Greece will still be subject to quarterly inspections from creditors after the bailout program ends in late August. Greece has already committed to two more years of budget austerity policies after its third consecutive international rescue program is concluded, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. But creditors on Wednesday said Greece will remain under an "enhanced surveillance framework" to ensure that it meets ambitious budget targets through 2022.

Greece exits its third international bailout in August, but without further debt relief it may not be able to sustain market access in the long run, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday. Greece and its European partners agreed last week on a set of debt measures to help the country emerge smoothly from the program, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The deal significantly improved medium-term debt sustainability but "longer prospects remain uncertain," the IMF said.

Leonidas Bobolas, the scion of a powerful Athens business family, is battling to keep control of Greece’s largest construction company in a test of its willingness to adopt international corporate governance standards as the country emerges from a disastrous financial crisis, the Financial Times reported.