Greece

Greece has reached a deal with international lenders on a range of structural reforms that will allow it to unlock a much-needed €10bn tranche of bailout aid, the Financial Times reported. The agreement was reached after an all-night bargaining session and brought an end to more than six months of gruelling negotiations that were slowed by resistance from local interest groups ranging from fresh milk producers to pharmacists.

Greece's four big, systemic banks will need another €5.8 billion ($8.0 billion) to shore up their fragile balance sheets, the country's central bank said Thursday, in order to cope with a growing mountain of bad loans that have become another painful legacy of Greece's protracted debt crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Greek government and its bailout lenders are locked in a new stand-off over the health of Greece’s banking sector, with Athens contending its financial system requires less than €6bn of new capital, while international monitors insist it needs at least three times that amount, the Financial Times reported.

Greece was set to resume protracted talks with a troika of international inspectors Monday, as the government aims for a deal that would unlock a fresh tranche of aid—but without painful new cutbacks ahead of local elections this spring, The Wall Street Journal reported. The talks, which have dragged on since September, come amid signs Greece has surpassed budget and economic targets set by its creditors, potentially strengthening Athens's negotiating position and easing the need for further politically contentious austerity measures in the months ahead.

When Antonis Kantas, a deputy in the Defense Ministry here, spoke up against the purchase of expensive German-made tanks in 2001, a representative of the tank’s manufacturer stopped by his office to leave a satchel on his sofa. It contained 600,000 euros, about $814,000. Other arms manufacturers eager to make deals came by, too, some guiding him through the ins and outs of international banking and then paying him off with deposits to his overseas accounts. At the time, Mr. Kantas, a wiry former military officer, did not actually have the authority to decide much of anything on his own.

Greece has met the conditions demanded of it by its international creditors and should get its promised bailout funds, central bank Governor George Provopoulos said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a speech at a London think-tank, Mr. Provopoulos said that his country had posted a primary budget surplus in 2013, a key condition for aid loans from the euro zone and International Monetary Fund under the agreement struck in November 2012.

Greek state-owned armoured vehicle maker Hellenic Vehicles Industry S.A. (ELVO) has gone into receivership, after years of losses, following a ruling by the Thessaloniki Court of Appeals on 30 January, IHS Jane’s 360 reported. The decision follows a petition by the Greek State to apply article 14A of Law 3249/2005 and place the company in special receivership. ELVO has recorded aggregate losses of EUR100 million in 2006-13 and owes EUR48 million to suppliers and banks.

Members of a European Parliament committee investigating the role of the troika and the impact of its policies in Greece on Thursday heralded the end of an “interim” institution, to be replaced by a “more democratically accountable and transparent” inspection process, and underlined the need for debt relief if Greece is to emerge from a spiral of austerity, ekathimerini.com reported.

Greece’s parliamentary budget office has warned that the country’s taxpayers are exhausted after four straight years of tax increases, reducing the government’s chances of achieving ambitious 2014 fiscal targets agreed with international creditors, the Financial Times reported. The independent budget monitoring office, set up under the terms of Greece’s bailout by the EU and the International Monetary Fund, said in its latest quarterly report that additional tax rises would be unlikely to boost revenues but could result in higher levels of tax evasion and unpaid debts to the state.

Greece’s highest legal body is expected to demand a reversal of salary cuts for the country’s security services imposed as part of a second €172bn international bailout in a move that could derail this year’s budget and lead to similar claims by other groups of public sector workers, the Financial Times reported. A decision by the council of state leaked to Athens lawyers and local media ahead of its official publication rules that the cuts were unconstitutional and should be fully reimbursed, according to a person with knowledge of the procedures.