Foreign players up positions
Foreign investors increased their holdings in Greek stocks in July, placing 744 million euros in local equities, data from the Athens bourse showed yesterday. Most of this trading corresponded to the sale by the Greek government of a 5 percent stake in OTE telecom to Deutsche Telekom – 24,507,519 shares worth 673.9 million euros last month. Foreign portfolios owned 48.13 percent of the Greek market’s free-float in July, up from 48.0 in June but down from 51.6 percent in July 2008. In contrast, domestic investors were net sellers with outflows reaching 739 million euros. The average daily trading value in July fell to 182 million euros from 221 million in June. It was also down compared with the same month a year earlier when the bourse traded 247 million euros daily. Month-on-month, the Greek equity market’s total capitalization rose 8.3 percent in July to 89.1 billion euros, representing some 35.6 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product.
