HFSF to take part in banks’ increase

A Finance Ministry bill that changes the founding charter of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF), set up in 2010, is opening the way for the participation of the fund in the share capital increases of banks up to the stake it already owns.

This change is being made ahead of the 1.1-billion-euro share capital increase at Piraeus Bank, scheduled for April, with the HFSF controlling 61.3% of its share capital.

The new law aims at safeguarding the interest of the HFSF as the main stakeholder, allowing it to exercise its rights in an increase, regardless of whether the increase is taking place because the bank does not fulfill its capital adequacy obligations as the founding law of the HFSF provides for.

That means the participation of the fund is dissociated from the issue of the bank’s recapitalization, which according to the founding law was also the cause of its creation. The necessary condition, according to the bill, is for the increases to take place with the participation of private investors too, with their own funds.