Tuesday, February 28: Athens Stock Exchange

Post date: Mar 03, 2017 8:15:12 AM

By Lina Grant

For the economic groups' first meeting, we traveled to the Athens Exchange Group (ATHEX) to discuss the Greek government’s response to its debt crisis and the country’s investment climate, with a particular focus on the stock exchange’s role in improving the economy, stimulating growth, and attracting investments. We decided to walk to our destination, rather than take the bus—a 2.5 km that ended up feeling like 5—that was nevertheless more pleasant than a bus ride would likely have been. Upon arrival, we were greeted with the finest Greek hospitality: juice, coffee, water, and treats filled the table; our chairs featured ATHEXGROUP bags that we were to keep, that provided all we would need for our meeting (including a shiny Greek magazine that featured Obama in front of the Parthenon, during his trip to Greece in the fall of 2016).

The meeting began with a welcome message read by Iakovos Georganas, the non-executive Chairman of the AEG, which provided an overview of Greece’s accomplishments, both economic and historic, and situated the economic crisis in economic factors that helped to contextualize its performance among other EU and OECD countries. Citing factors like the number of holiday homes in the country (2.5 million); or the amount of euros deposited in Greek banks every year (120 billion); or the large number (5,000) of Greek-owned merchant ships plying the seas of the world carrying a fifth of the cargoes need for keep the world economy going—helped to support the chairman’s argument that the economy is both solvent and dynamic, and that with appropriate management, the state could be solvent as well. The overall welcome painted an optimistic outlook for the future of Greece’s economy. One of the surprising points made was in the discussion of factors that could bring down the country’s high unemployment rate among youth: the emigration of highly-qualified people that would remove at least 100,000 people from the unemployment figures. This was cited as a factor that could contribute to pushing unemployment below 10% —interesting!