Greece

Greek telecommunications company Wind Hellas Thursday said it has begun a strategic review, which includes the potential sale of the business and the appointment of a chief restructuring officer, as the company's performance continues to suffer in the wake of the Greek government's austerity measures, Dow Jones reported. The news comes just six months after Wind Hellas completed a debt restructuring that stripped away more than €1 billion of its debt.

Wind Hellas Telecommunications SA, the Greek mobile phone operator that restructured its debt last year, will miss 40.5 million euros ($50 million) of debt payments due in the next two weeks, according to Naguib Sawiris, its Egyptian billionaire owner. Greece’s third-largest mobile-phone operator has asked creditors not to push it into default as it seeks to restructure its debt for the second time in seven months, Sawiris said in an interview.

The heavily indebted Greek government has adopted the International Monetary Fund's recommendation to raise some of the €320 billion ($390 billion) it owes foreign lenders through privatization. And that has transformed central Athens into a stage for daily demonstrations, even in the heat of summer when many here typically take long vacations, The Christian Science Monitor reported. While Tuesday's demonstration was smaller than past protests this year, strikes are expected to pick up again when vacationers return from the beach. Privatization continues at a rapid pace.

It is time to recognise that Greece is not just suffering from a liquidity crisis; it is facing an insolvency crisis too, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Rating agencies have started to downgrade its public debt to junk level, while spreads on Greek sovereign bonds last week spiked to new highs. The €110bn bail-out agreed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May only delays the inevitable default and risks making it disorderly when it comes. Instead, an orderly restructuring of Greece’s public debt is needed now.

Public services in Greece ground to a halt and transport was disrupted on Tuesday as thousands of workers joined a general strike, the fifth this year, to protest deeply unpopular spending cuts that the debt-ridden government has promised its international creditors, The New York Times reported. The country’s two main labor unions, representing some three million workers, vehemently oppose a draft law that aims to raise retirement ages, reduce monthly payments to pensioners and facilitate layoffs.

There's little that shouts "seriously rich" as much as a little island in the sun to call your own. For Sir Richard Branson it is Neckar in the Caribbean, the billionaire Barclay brothers prefer Brecqhou in the Channel Islands, while Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios, his Greek hideway. Now Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sunkissed islands in a desperate attempt to repay its mountainous debts, The Guardian reported.

French bank Credit Agricole SA's Emporiki Bank of Greece SA unit said Tuesday that it now expects to return to profit in 2012—instead of its previously forecast 2011—because of rising loan losses, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bank said that the amount it needs to set aside to cover loan losses had increased by €450 million ($553 million) through 2013 compared with expectations last year when it first outlined its restructuring plan. It said most of the additional risk costs will be concentrated in 2010 and 2011.

Greece won’t restructure its debt, and December tranches of international loans are secure provided the nation keeps implementing its stability plan, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told the Proto Thema newspaper, Bloomberg reported. Greece “battled to avoid and avoided” restructuring its debt with the help of the 110 billion-euro ($136.3 billion) European Union and International Monetary Fund loan package, the newspaper cited Papaconstantinou as saying in an interview published today.

Greece's debt-ridden economy has received unexpected endorsement from China as the two countries announced multibillion euro accords to boost cooperation in fields as diverse as shipping, tourism and telecommunications, The Guardian reported. The deals, which will see Greek olive oil being exported to China, were a welcome relief for a government smarting over Moody's move hours earlier to downgrade the nation's credit rating to junk. As investors moved in the other direction, the world's pre-eminent emerging economy embraced Greece.

Newly elected and facing a huge budget deficit, Prime Minister George Papandreou arrived in Brussels for his first meeting with European leaders last December with few cards to play, The New York Times reported. Improbably, perhaps, his strategy of total transparency worked. Within months, he had managed to secure the bailout he needed while still maintaining good relations with his fellow European leaders — quite a feat, many observers say. At the height of the crisis in the spring, Mr. Papandreou brought the International Monetary Fund into negotiations.