Liquidity boost for Piraeus
Piraeus Bank, Greece’s fourth-largest lender, said yesterday it had completed three new loan securitizations totaling 3.5 billion euros to enhance the group’s liquidity. «Class A notes of all the above securitizations are eligible collateral for European Central Bank (ECB) refinancing purposes,» the bank said in a bourse filing. Together with two other securitizations completed in the second quarter, which totaled 1.6 billion euros, the group’s total issuance since the start of the year has reached 5.1 billion euros, the bourse filing said. Piraeus said it securitized 540 million euros of leasing loans of subsidiary Piraeus Leases on August 14 and an additional 538 million euros of consumer loans on the same day. On August 17 it securitized 2.3 billion euros of business loans. Securitization is the process of pooling various types of debt, such as mortgages, and packaging it as bonds which are then sold to investors.