Time running out fast for Marinopoulos
Time is running out for Greece’s biggest supermarket chain, Marinopoulos, as every day that goes by sees it deteriorating even further. Some of the parties involved are hoping for an end to negotiations within this week, so that a streamlining agreement can be submitted and approved by the courts in September.
The final word belongs to the crediting banks, which in less than six months have been asked to pay a total of half a billion euros – 140 million in spring and 360 million this summer – to an enterprise that is not at all certain to pull through and be able to start developing again. Besides that, banks also appear to have differing views on the level of the interest rate that will be imposed.
Alternate Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiadis said in Parliament on Friday that the government will introduce a special regulation for Marinopoulos’s suppliers, who are owed millions of euros, without offering any details on its content.
He added that the government is preparing a response to the problem concerning all of the chain’s suppliers, not just agricultural producers, as it “examines the issue of Marinopoulos on a more general basis,” Alexiadis stated.
