Shaping up for the single currency
OTE’s new tranche triggers jealousies
Last November Delta Securities, a broker on the Athens stock exchange, tried to pay the clearing house with bad cheques to the tune of Dr2.6 billion ($95.7 million). In the ensuing crisis the exchange closed for three days – an unprecedented event – while the exchange authorities attempted to assess the extent of the deception. Three Delta executives were charged with fraud and warned not to leave the country, the firm’s assets were frozen and its offices sealed.
It soon emerged that the debts had arisen from a price-ramping ploy that had backfired, and the clearing house refused to pay several other brokerages alleged to have been caught up in the affair.
Stock exchange chairman Manolis Xanthakis is a calm, relaxed-looking former academic, but he needed all his wits about him to cope with the crisis, which substantially dented the credibility...
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