A positive assessment by Moody's of a recently announced plan by the Bank of Greece (BoG) to reduce an Olympus-sized "mountain" of "bad debt" plaguing Greek systemic banks' balance sheets provided a fillip on Thursday for trading at the Athens Stock Exchange (ATHEX).
The beleaguered banking index, in particular, was leading the market at the beginning of trading, starting off up 3.5 percent overall.
Moody's this week referred to the BoG plan for a reduction of NPEs as "credit positive". Gains nevertheless were tempered by the pending downgrade of three out of the four systemic banks on the MSCI index.
