Greek Financial Stability Fund Chairman to resign
- Piraeus Bank 's former VP Panayotis Rumeliotis, could be his successor
The Chairman of the Greek banking bailout fund, Christos Sclavounis, has announced his resignation to the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
In a statement, the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) said the resignation had been accepted but did not reveal the reason behind it.
The former Greek representative at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and former Vice President of the Piraeus Bank, Panayotis Rumeliotis, is in line to replace Sclavounis.
This announcement takes place at the same time that it has been made public that a Greek spokesman has confirmed that the structural reforms package will be sent to Brussels on 30 March.
Read more: Greece prepares to submit fresh reform plan
The HFSF received a total of €48.2bn between 2012 and 2014 in order to provide liquidity to the Greek banks, but €10.9bn were left over. The previous government lead by Andonis Samaras hoped to use them as capital reserve. However, following the four-month extension of the bailout, that amount had to be transferred to the European Financial Stability Facility to be used only if needed for bank capitalization.
The current government of Alexis Tsipras has requested €555m from this reserve to deal with liquidity difficulties, as recently confirmed to the Spanish news agency Efe by EU sources.
The announcement also comes after Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Monday and confirmed that he wants his country to stay in the euro.
Although Tsipras mentioned some of the major points of contention such as the perceived failure of the bailout programme, he also acknowledged that governments must respect treaties and contracts.
“Since tearing up memorandums should be inconsistent with that, this may have been an olive branch from Tsipras, maybe even a U-turn,” noted Berenberg senior economics Christian Schulz in a note to clients.
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