Greece

Bailout inspectors have returned to Athens as Greece races to comply with the final terms of its rescue program, which ends in August. Negotiations resumed Monday, with Greece still facing dozens of measures to address in the next ten days to remain on track for an agreement next month on the terms of bailout debt repayment after the program ends, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

Greece’s four biggest banks would take a €15.5bn hit to their average capital in a future economic downturn, according to the results of the European Central Bank’s stress test of the country’s main lenders. The ECB’s health check of the Greek banking system is designed to determine if any of the banks need extra equity before the country enters talks on leaving its eight-year bailout programme. Senior Greek officials said the outcome of the exercise meant there was “no immediate need for a capital increase by any bank”.

A final round of diplomacy meant to smooth Greece’s exit from eight years of bailouts kicked off Friday, as eurozone finance ministers pushed to ensure Athens doesn’t backslide on promised reforms, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ministers, meeting in neighboring Bulgaria, called for Greece to speed up on the remaining changes that need to be completed before the bailout regime ends in August. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is seeking to free Greece from the strict austerity it has endured since a crisis that left it perilously close to crashing out of the eurozone.

The European Commission confirmed on Monday that Greece beat its bailout targets again last year, strengthening the government’s case against demands to bring forward additional tax measures originally scheduled to kick in starting 2020, Bloomberg News reported. Europe’s most indebted state achieved a budget surplus before interest and other one-time payments equal to 4.2 percent of its gross domestic product in 2017, more than twice the target set by its bailout auditors for a 1.75 percent of GDP surplus, the European Union’s executive arm said.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister who transfixed Europe with his unconventional style at the climax of the debt crisis, launched a new party on Monday promising to free his country from debt bondage, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The academic economist - who once described the austerity imposed by Greece's creditors as "fiscal waterboarding" - said his new MeRA25 party would revive the economy through debt restructuring and other measures.

Greece’s planned August exit from its third European Stability Mechanism bailout has triggered investor optimism. Its July 2017 bond issuance, the first in three years, was oversubscribed, as were subsequent issuances in February of this year. And yet financial investors should curb their optimism, a Bloomberg View reported. Greece’s return to the markets, and its economic recovery, are likely to be a bumpy and slow -- especially if it continues to delay key reforms. Greece’s growth appears to have stabilized at a low rate; some take that as a sign of normalization.

Greece won't backtrack on its privatisation plan after its bailout ends and expects state companies to submit plans by April to make themselves more competitive, the head of its state assets fund said. Greece, whose bailout ends in August, has agreed with lenders to raise another 3 billion euros (2.63 billion pounds) by 2019 from state asset sales and has promised to launch stake sales in Athens International Airport (AIA), gas company DEPA and oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum by next month, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Investors who bought Greece’s latest bond last week are already nursing paper losses, the Financial Times reported. The seven-year bond priced at a yield of 3.5 per cent on Thursday, but the €3bn paper is now trading at 4.19 per cent. Yields rise when prices fall. The timing of the deal was hit by market turbulence last week, with Greece naming bookrunners on the Monday but, after markets shifted on Tuesday, it waited until Thursday to price. The yield on Greece’s 10-year debt has also risen, up 80 basis points in the past week to 4.47 per cent.

Greece’s jobless rate was steady at 20.9 percent in November, unchanged from an upwardly revised figure in October, the country’s statistics service ELSTAT said on Thursday. Greece’s jobless rate was steady at 20.9 percent in November, unchanged from an upwardly revised figure in October, the country’s statistics service ELSTAT said on Thursday. Among younger persons aged 15 to 24, the jobless rate eased to 43.7 percent from 46.1 percent in the same month in 2016, Reuters reported.

Greece will sell 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) of seven-year bonds in another step toward exiting a bailout program in August that has kept the nation afloat, Bloomberg News reported. The offer for the 2025 notes will price to yield 3.5 percent, inside an initial target of about 3.75 percent, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because they’re not authorized to speak about it. Investor orders for the sale topped 6 billion euros, the people said. Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co.