Financial Times on Friday reported that a subsidiary of the US-based private equity group KKR has made its second foray into Greece’s massive NPL market, with reports saying it will service some 150 million euros of bad debt extended by the country’s four systemic banks to a local department store chain.
Specifically, FT writes:
“…The move indicates how Greek lenders are responding to pressure from regulators to shed their vast piles of bad loans, while an improving eurozone economic climate is making it easier to clean up their balance sheets.
KKR’s Pillarstone unit, which was created four years ago to invest in companies held in the bad loan portfolios of Italian banks, has been hunting for similar Greek investments since gaining a licence in the country and investing in pharmaceutical group Famar last year. Pillarstone already manages more than €2bn of bad loans in total. It has agreed to service more than €150m of NPLs made by Greece’s four largest banks — Piraeus, Alpha Bank, Eurobank and National Bank of Greece — to Notos Com Holdings, which operates department stores and a wholesale fashion business.
Pillarstone and the four banks are also injecting about €25m of fresh equity into the company. Greek banks, which have been recapitalised three times since a 2010 debt crisis, are still weighed down by about €100bn of bad loans, which on average account for about half their balance sheets — higher than any other EU country."
