Greek Banks in Greece

By Kevin Oates

A few years ago the Greek shipping community had to look almost exclusively to foreign banks to find conventional ship financing. There were plenty of them, European and American, up and down Akti Miaouli and they enjoyed a near monopoly on term lending and operational services. The only Greek player in the game was the National Bank of Greece but it’s participation was not significant. The other Greek state banks were not involved and at that time there were no private Greek banks to talk about.

Now in 2000 there are a number of Greek banks involved in ship financing. According to a Marine Money survey about $ 2.75 billion of the total $ 16 billion advanced to the Greek shipping industry is provided by Greek banks. That’s about 17% and we estimate that this is probably more than three times the percentage of the total advanced by Greek banks a decade ago.

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