Three Greek Banks Eye Acquiring Crédit Agricole’s Greek Unit

Greece’s three biggest lenders – National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank and Eurobank EFG have shown interest in buying Credit Agricole SA’s (ACA) Greek unit. Crédit Agricole invited local banks to submit offers for a majority stake in Emporiki earlier this month as fears mounted of a run on Greek banks.

Potential bidders for Emporiki have already asked the Hellenic Financial Stability fund for permission to use part of the €18bn of capital disbursed to the country’s four largest lenders in May as bridge capital to raise their capital adequacy ratio to 8 per cent so that they can regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The decision to sell Emporiki, Greece’s fifth largest bank by assets, comes as a blow to the new coalition government that took office last week pledging to keep the country in the euro zone and turn its economy around by 2014, Financial Times reported.