Lehman ATHEX transactions settled
The Athens Exchange has settled all transactions involving Lehman Brothers on the local market said ATHEX chairman Spyros Capralos yesterday, warning of further financial market turmoil to come. US investment firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, after 158 years of business, sparking fears of a full-blown global financial crisis. «Lehman Brothers was one of the players in our market. We managed to settle all transactions that were conducted by Lehman on our market,» said Capralos at a conference in Sofia. The Athens bourse has lost more than 10 percent in the last week as weak equity sentiment hits markets across the world. «I hope markets will at some point recover. We still face difficulties ahead. I think the crisis is more severe than it was a few months ago,» Capralos added. Separately, the Istanbul bourse and ATHEX plan to launch a joint index before the end of the year. In February, the two bourses reached an agreement on creating the joint index that will include the top 15 companies from each market. «There will be four banks per country, because we do not want it to be a bank-weighted index,» Capralos said. After the launch of the index, the bourses also plan to create exchange-traded funds.
