Alpha Bank accepts sale of bad debt portfolio to Hoist Finance

A man withdraws money from an Alpha Bank ATM in central Athens, Greece, July 19, 2015. REUTERS / Yiannis Kourtoglou

ATHENS, December 28 (Reuters) – Alpha Bank (ACBr.AT), one of Greece’s four largest lenders, on Tuesday announced that it had reached a binding agreement with Hoist Finance AB to sell non-performing loans with a book value of 1.3 billion euros ($ 1.47 billion).

The Orbit portfolio concerns non-performing, unsecured retail loans expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, the bank said in a statement.

“The transaction was concluded at 108 million euros, or 7.4% of the total outstanding principal balance,” the bank said.

Greek banks have struggled to shrink an estimated € 30 billion stack of bad debt, a legacy of a decade-long financial crisis that slashed Greek output by a quarter.

The operation is the third after the securitization of the Galaxy and Cosmos portfolios. It is expected to reduce Alpha Bank’s non-performing exposures by 2.3 percentage points.

($ 1 = € 0.8841)

Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; edited by Jason Neely

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