The Greek banking system is facing an uphill struggle in cutting costs when the average number of employees per branch is 23, against an average of 12 in the rest of the European Union, Dow Jones wire service says in its analysis of two of the country’s largest banks, National and Alpha, whose merger plan fell through early this year. The analysis says that inflexible labor laws make early retirement schemes virtually the only way for a bank to reduce staff. Alpha Bank reported a 13-percent rise in second-quarter expenses from a year earlier — partly due to heavy advertising outlay — and a sharp 60-percent downturn in earnings in the same period. National, which is expected to publish results on Wednesday, is estimated to report a 7-8-percent rise in expenses, largely due to an early retirement scheme, and a 55-percent decline in pretax profits.

The Finance Ministry is coming under pressure from IT firms to speed up a spate of big information technology projects in the public and private sectors, subsidized under the EU-sponsored Information Society program. The auctioning of the public sector projects was due to be announced in June but has been put back to September. The “Electronic Entrepreneurship” subprogram which concerns 600 firms is expected to get underway in the same month, while the project “Syzefxis,” networking public administrative services, is projected for completion this month. Tenders for regional health services and the “Police On Line” project are expected to be announced before September 15.

Italy’s Telecom Italia Mobile SpA announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with Verizon Communications to buy the US company’s 17.45-percent stake in Greek mobile phone operator Stet Hellas Telecommunication SA for around 108 million euros. The Italian operator, which already owns 63.95 percent of Stet Hellas through its subsidiary TIM International NV, will become Stet’s only industrial shareholder, TIM said in a statement. With this move, TIM follows up on its announced international strategy of focusing on Greece, Turkey and Latin America. Stet Hellas, which has about 2.3 million customers, is listed on both Nasdaq in New York and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. (Dow Jones/AP)

Greece’s wholesale inflation eased 0.1 percent year-on-year in June after rising 0.7 percent in May, the National Statistics Service (NSS) said. Month-on-month, wholesale inflation fell 0.8 percent, NSS said, mainly due to lower prices in agricultural products and fish. (Reuters)

Space Hellas has installed Cisco Systems technology in an integrated data and voice transmission project connecting the Aldemar chain of hotels with the Athens head office. The chain includes Knossos Royal Village, Cretan Village and Royal Mare Village on Crete, Olympian Village in the Peloponnese, and Paradise Royal Mare and Paradise Royal Village on Rhodes.