By Shira Ovide, Wall Street Journal
Greece is selling everything that’s not nailed down to help pay off the country’s groaning debt pile.
Deal Journal colleague Alkman Granitsas is reporting that Greece will unveil plans to private state-owned assets with a target value of €15 billion by 2013 and €50 billion by 2015. Greece is looking to privatize everything from the national railroad company to regional airports and the national lottery system, Granitsas said.
The planned deals are a big deal for Greece, which essentially has been frozen out of capital markets after the country’s massive bailout from the European Union and the IMF. Greece is faced with a public debt crisis that has freaked out investors around the world and set off a spate of downgrades from the debt-rating agencies. Greece is even trying to sell “diaspora bonds” to people of Greek descent who want to invest in the mother land.
Granitsas said:
In a statement, the finance ministry said it had named France’s BNP Paribas SA (13110.FR) and the National Bank of Greece SA to act as advisers in its efforts to extend the privately managed concession for the Athens International Airport….
The committee also said it had appointed Citigroup Inc. and Piraeus Bank SA as financial advisers for a separate project to exploit the site formerly occupied by the old Athens airport in a suburb south of the capital. The plot, located in an upscale area of Athens, is expected to raise at least EUR5 billion from prospective developers.
Likewise, it named Lazard Ltd. as financial adviser in its plans to restructure and expand the commercial operations of the state-owned Loans and Consignment Fund.
