Next comes Piraeus, where the HFSF holds a 27% stake. For the time being the possibilities regarding the amount of this transaction remain open. In the middle of next week, the detailed proposal of the disposal consultant (BofA) is expected to be submitted to the Board of the Fund, including both the disposal percentage and the price range. What remains to be seen is whether the government will decide to disengage “in one move” from Piraeus or whether it will decide to keep a staske, as happened with National Bank.

According to the legislation that governs disinvestment of shareholdings in banks, once six months have passed since the first transaction, a new one can follow. For the National Bank, this will happen in mid-May – therefore disposal of the remaining 18% may happen after Easter – provided, of course, market conditions are favorable.

After those moves, the HFSF will retain only the stake it holds in Attica Bank. The Greek government regards HFSF’s participation in the banking sector as a remnant of the Adjustment Programs Era. Macroeconomic conditions are now met for it to complete its mission. This is a rather different approach to the one adopted during the previous decades. In the early 1980s, privatisation emerged as the “antidote” to the pernicious effects of the sprawling presence of the public sector in the economy and as the main instrument for rebalancing countries moving away from communism, or else communist countries wishing to reinvigorate their economies. The lasting contributions of privatization were to successfully recognise the shifting line between the public and the private sector, to  create space for the provision of more effective and efficient public infrastructure and social services and to bring in regulation to non-competitive markets.

The book “Privatisations in Greece: The end of the road?” by Costas Mitropoulos offers a complete review of privatisation in Greece from 1990 to 2019 and attempts to address some interesting questions. What were the driving forces behind privatization? what were the obstacles? how systematically was it applied? and at the end did it facilitate reforms and enhance the performance of the Greek economy?