Good morning. Life is slowly starting to feel normal again, although the tail end of summer is holding on with high temperatures. The measures have been announced and are already being weighed up as of yesterday, and the post-Fair opinion polls have begun, giving us a clearer picture of where each party now stands. As we reported before Thessaloniki, New Democracy’s real standing, the governing centre-right party, once undecided voters are factored in, sits at around 30%. We will now see what has changed since the Prime Minister’s announcements. In truth, though, the impact of the measures will not become clear now, but only once voters see the results in their own pockets, that is, the increases or the relief coming from the new year, from the end of January. In any case, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, the Minister of National Economy and Finance, gave what was practically a Ben Hur of an interview yesterday explaining the measures, running two and a half hours, in which he and his team exhausted the subject, and themselves, along with the economic correspondents covering it. They spelled out everything down to the smallest detail, right down to taxi drivers who were paying a full presumptive tax assessment even when they held their taxi licence jointly with two others. Let us wait and see, gradually, how moved New Democracy’s own supporters will be, even though the party’s trade and business figures are grumbling, mainly over the slow pace, just 5% a year, of the cut to advance tax payments. The first to complain publicly about this was Giannis Bratakos, in his capacity as President of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EVEA). He called the cut a hole in the water, but this particular hole costs €400 million, so speeding it up simply opens another hole in the budget. I should mention that Bratakos’s public reaction infuriated Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who reportedly felt it was rich coming from someone the government had helped install at EVEA in the first place. Still, that was the final straw.

The risk of the downed pencils

Now that all the ministers are back from the Fair and have returned to their desks with ordinary business to attend to, the message coming out of the Maximos Mansion, the Prime Minister’s office, is clear: in these final months before the ballot box, there is no room for the kind of complacency that typically creeps into governments nearing the end of their term, what is known in Greek politics as the “downed pencil” syndrome. The Prime Minister’s office, and Mitsotakis himself, who keeps a close eye on his ministers, will see to that. That said, talk has started up again among ministers and MPs about the possibility of one final reshuffle, something Mitsotakis is not even considering.

National travels

With life back to normal after the Fair, and against a complex geopolitical backdrop, a series of trips and contacts with a geopolitical dimension is now getting under way. Today Mitsotakis will be in Egypt, where he will meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, with a full agenda of issues on the table. This is no routine exchange: Turkey has spent recent months trying to reset its relationship with Egypt, and there is even talk that Egypt could be drawn into the framework of the Mecca agreement. As you can imagine, Greece has no interest in seeing that kind of development take shape in its own neighbourhood. Also today in Rome, Defence Minister Nikos Dendias will be present as Greece signs the contract for the Bergamini frigates ordered by the Hellenic Navy, while the visit to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia has been pushed back to late October.

The Greek fund manager and Alexis’s fiscal Nephilim

Yesterday, Anglo-Greek hedge fund manager Chris Rokos visited Pierrakakis’s office. According to Bloomberg, he is leaving Britain to settle in Greece. The reason, again according to Bloomberg, is the abolition of the non-dom tax regime and the higher taxes introduced by the UK. Rokos is no minor figure in the markets. He manages more than $20 billion, advises the Bank of England on international markets, and sits on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s international markets advisory committee. What is drawing him to Greece is the special tax regime for non-doms’ income earned outside the country, which the government has adopted. Bloomberg even describes Rokos’s relocation as a win for Greece, noting that, according to the Sunday Times, he was among the country’s top taxpayers, paying £330 million in tax last year alone. Now imagine a billionaire choosing to settle in Greece while former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, now leader of the Greek Left Coalition, and his circle carry on talking about the richest 1%, wealth registries, asset declarations, safe deposit boxes, a global database of assets, and other assorted “Nephilim”. The awkward part, for them at least, not for Mitsotakis, is that four and a half years after governing with SYRIZA, the left-wing party he used to lead, they are repeating the same obsessive nonsense. What is odder still is that Tsipras’s own team today includes at least four people who understand perfectly well how the world, and the market, actually works. Bloomberg also notes that, since Britain changed its non-dom rules, a string of billionaires has been leaving the country, among them a familiar name to the Greek market: Egypt’s second-richest man, Naguib Sawiris.

Mitsotakis’s trip and the Egyptian land earmarked for the Kopelouzos cable

Today’s trip by Mitsotakis to Egypt, and his meeting with Sisi, carries a strong energy dimension, since the Greece-Egypt electricity interconnector is one of the major investment projects linking Athens and Cairo. The Prime Minister had already signalled as much at the Fair, highlighting the energy dimension of the bilateral relationship alongside geopolitical and military cooperation. His specific reference to GREGY, the Greece-Egypt cable being promoted by the Kopelouzos Group, a major Greek energy and infrastructure conglomerate, and to its European co-financing, underlined the importance the government attaches to the project. It comes at a moment when preparation of the investment is progressing on two fronts: the interconnector itself, and the production facilities that will feed it. On the cable, the first study on the optimal route for the undersea and onshore sections in Greece and Egypt has now been completed. In July, three international tenders were also launched, for the environmental study, for selecting a consultant for the offshore survey, and for the geotechnical investigation of the onshore route. The plan envisages these studies being completed by 2028, with the various procedures running in parallel to keep preparation time to a minimum. A significant step has also been taken on the Egyptian side, with the area that will host the project’s wind and solar installations now finalised. It covers 3,200 square kilometres, or 3.2 million stremmas (a Greek land unit equal to 1,000 square metres), and has been reserved by presidential decree, ruling out any other use. The land has been handed over to Egypt’s Energy Ministry, and the next stage is its transfer to the Kopelouzos Group company that will develop the renewable energy projects. The scale of the energy plan explains the huge land requirements involved. It provides for the installation of 8.5 GW of total capacity, made up of 5.4 GW of wind farms and 3.1 GW of solar plants, with no storage batteries included at this stage. These facilities will generate the green electricity that will then be carried to Greece via GREGY. For the Kopelouzos Group, securing the land and advancing the studies represent two substantial steps in maturing the investment. The interest of the Mitsotakis-Sisi meeting therefore also lies in what momentum it can give this plan going forward. The political backing is there; what is now needed is to speed up the next stages of implementation, and above all, to secure financing for this vast project.

Turmoil among developers

It took the property market just 48 hours to respond to the Prime Minister’s announcement of a fivefold increase in the transfer tax on home purchases, from 3% to 15% (15.45% including the municipal levy), for buyers from outside the EU/EEA, effective from 2027. Ministers’ phones have been ringing off the hook since Saturday evening, with major developers on the line. At Lamda Development, which has thousands of homes at the Hellinikon project aimed at an international clientele, and at Dimand, whose FIX project in Thessaloniki and other developments are running on pre-sales, the tax rise has caused real concern. On a property worth €500,000, the tax jumps from €15,000 to €75,000. On a €2 million home at Hellinikon, it rises from €60,000 to €300,000. Lawyers have already rushed to propose “solutions born of desperation”. A prospective buyer from outside the EU could set up a private limited company (an IKE), have the company buy the property while paying just 3% tax, and, should it ever sell, pay 22% corporate tax on the capital gain, unless lawmakers include an ultimate-beneficial-owner clause, in which case the game gets harder, though it does not stop. The upshot is that the measure is unlikely to raise the €100 million a year the Finance Ministry has budgeted for, based on around €800 million worth of home purchases by non-EU buyers in 2025, though it will spawn a small new industry of corporate vehicles. International experience offers little encouragement. In Canada, an outright ban in place since 2023 has done nothing to improve affordability, since foreign buyers never accounted for more than 1% to 6% of transactions there. New Zealand opened a “window” in its own ban last December, for investor-visa holders buying homes worth more than NZ$5 million. Spain tabled a bill in May 2025 for a 100% tax on non-EU buyers, and has never brought it to a vote. The market’s cooler heads suggest the obvious fix: if the aim is to protect “ordinary housing”, apply the 15% rate with a value cap, say up to €500,000, where foreign buyers genuinely compete with Greek ones. Above that threshold, on the luxury properties that bring in capital and jobs and are not sought by Greek households, there should be no sudden extra burden. Until the bill is finalised, there is time for plenty more debate and adjustment.

Deutsche Telekom’s CEO in Athens

A large Deutsche Telekom delegation has been in Greece over the past few days for the major rebranding of OTE, Greece’s biggest telecoms group, under the Telekom brand. Attending in Athens will be Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges and Dominique Leroy, a Deutsche Telekom board member responsible for Europe, along with other senior executives; we understand a meeting with Mitsotakis is also planned. The transition to the new brand culminates today, 8 September, with the launch of the communications campaign, and on Wednesday a large party will be held in the grounds of OTE’s headquarters in Maroussi for the group’s staff. The change is not confined to rebranding: closer integration of OTE into Deutsche Telekom’s international ecosystem is expected to strengthen synergies in technology, products and commercial partnerships, with related announcements to follow in the coming period.

Looking beyond Epirus

Epirus Bank has entered a new phase, with shareholders at its general meeting formally approving the expansion of the board from 10 to 11 members and the election of shipowner Peter (Petros) Nomikos, who has become the bank’s largest shareholder through his investment vehicle Capstone Capital. Alongside this, the bank’s newly published results show strong growth in business volumes in 2025, though profitability came under pressure. Assets rose by 7.6% to €381.8 million, gross lending grew by 11.2% to €277.4 million, and deposits increased by 8% to €339.1 million. At the same time, the balance sheet clean-up continued, with non-performing loans down 15% to €59.9 million and the NPL ratio falling to 21.6% from 28.2%. Pre-tax profit, however, came in at €574,000, down from €2 million, while after-tax profit stood at €329,000, down from €1.2 million. 2025 marked a watershed year for the bank’s transformation, with its conversion from a cooperative credit institution into a public limited banking company completed by the end of the year. This was followed in February 2026 by a capital increase of around €30 million, which creates significant additional room for credit and geographic expansion.

The big share auction of 18 September

Stock market analysts have circled the date in red as the year’s biggest technical event. On Friday 18 September, at the closing auctions, the capital flows of three index providers, FTSE Russell, STOXX and S&P Dow Jones Indices, will converge as they carry out the same recalculation for Greece’s move into developed-market status, effective from Monday 21 September. JP Morgan, sticking to its original estimates, calculates that the nine Greek entries into the STOXX Europe 600 will trigger passive buying of $1.15 billion, with the four systemic banks absorbing 87% of that, or $1 billion just for those four alone. The National Bank of Greece will need buying equal to 10.9 days of average trading volume in a single auction, Eurobank 7 days, Piraeus Bank 6.4 days and Alpha Bank 4.7 days. Jumbo is the only non-bank stock on the list, needing 3.2 days of trading volume. On the FTSE indices, by contrast, the “upgrade” will actually trigger more selling than buying: according to JP Morgan’s July estimates, emerging-market funds will offload a total of $1.81 billion, while developed-market funds will buy $1.70 billion. On the S&P indices, Greece will shrink from 0.73% of the emerging-markets index to 0.09% of the developed-markets one. From a big fish in a small bowl, Athens will become a small, quick and nimble fish in the ocean. The Athens Stock Exchange will nonetheless have a dual identity for eight months, since MSCI is keeping Greece in its emerging-markets index until May 2027. There, JP Morgan’s figures point to mixed flows of $5 billion in each direction, with a negative flow of $165 million for Jumbo. In Milan, meanwhile, at the Euronext conference attended by 16 Greek companies, the question institutional investors were asking had already shifted. They were no longer debating whether to invest in Greece, but which stock to buy, and at what price.

HELLENiQ Energy breaks through €16 and doubles its value

Greece’s refining sector remains on a record-breaking run on the Athens Stock Exchange, led by HELLENiQ Energy, which has posted a new 27-year high. The stock broke through the €16 barrier on a closing basis for the first time since October 1999, closing at €16.26, with an intraday high of €16.55. The impressive rally, up 94.5% so far in 2026 after starting the year at €8.36, takes the group’s market value to €4.97 billion, with the next technical milestone now set at €17. Investor confidence is being fuelled by the company’s ambitious investment plan of up to €5 billion, the restart of the Vardax pipeline, and its strategic positioning in the domestic and Balkan markets. By contrast, Motor Oil showed signs of fatigue, holding flat at €63.15 despite touching a fresh all-time intraday high of €65.4, with its market capitalisation now approaching €7 billion.

New 18-year high for PPC

Fresh highs for PPC (Public Power Corporation), Greece’s biggest power utility, which extended its 18-year record with a close of €24.26 and an intraday high of €24.42, holding above the €24 mark for a third straight session. The group’s market capitalisation now stands at €14.5 billion, putting it in fourth place among the most valuable listed companies on the Athens Stock Exchange, behind Coca-Cola HBC, Eurobank and the National Bank of Greece. The upward momentum is being driven by powerful catalysts in the company’s transformation. Goldman Sachs recently raised its price target to €27, a level the stock has not traded at since May 2008, identifying PPC’s dynamic entry into the data centre market and the green transition as a new “reservoir of value”. The acceleration of renewable energy investment and expansion into south-east Europe point to further scope for the stock to be re-rated upwards.

The first shipping company on the FTSE 25?

A goal that appears in no prospectus stood out at the presentation of Star Bulk’s dual listing: the prospect of becoming the first shipping company to join the FTSE/Athex Large Cap index, the Greek market’s blue-chip benchmark. For a market that has spent decades watching ocean-going shipping, one of the two most important sectors of the Greek economy, raise capital exclusively in New York and Oslo, the symbolism matters even more than the money. As Star Bulk CEO Petros Pappas put it yesterday, a simple dual listing without a new share issue would leave very few shares available for trading in Athens, and so next to no trading activity. The capital increase of more than €100 million creates the “critical mass” of liquidity that index eligibility criteria require. This, in other words, is not a company in need of funding, but a deliberate strategic choice: Star Bulk is “buying” its Greek stock market identity. On valuation, management says it is not chasing the highest possible price but one that leaves room for upside for new shareholders, roughly 20% below net asset value. On the Nasdaq, the stock (SBLK) trades at $31.50, valuing the shipping company at $3.62 billion (€3.13 billion), a size that places it among the largest companies on Euronext Athens. The obstacle standing between it and index inclusion is liquidity on the Athens board, and that is exactly what this public offering is designed to build.

Pier 6, and the million TEU still to be found

In Thessaloniki, plans are under way to more than double the container terminal’s capacity, from 650,000 to 1.5 million TEU. Impressive numbers. But there is a question doing the rounds in the market: where will the extra cargo come from? Geopolitical upheaval is not necessarily working in Greek ports’ favour. The more that large container ships avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal in favour of sailing around Africa, the more Greece’s geographical advantage as Europe’s first gateway from Asia is eroded. Piraeus has already felt the effect. True, ships have lately begun gradually returning to the Suez route. But at the Thessaloniki Port Authority, the real game is different. It is not enough for Pier 6 to be able to accommodate a 24,000 TEU vessel; there has to be a reason for that vessel to call at Thessaloniki in the first place. And that reason is the Balkans and central Europe. Railways, road networks, logistics, and agreements with the big liner companies will determine whether the extra capacity ever gets filled. What is notable is that the Thessaloniki Port Authority is not starting from a low base. In 2025 it already reached 617,000 TEU, very close to its current capacity. Pier 6, then, solves the space problem. The harder problem now is finding the cargo to fill it.

Beijing’s next move in Greek shipping, via the Bank of China

A piece of news that largely slipped under the radar has more depth to it than it first appears. The proposal by shipping banker Giorgos Xiradakis for a permanent Beijing-Piraeus shipping and investment cooperation platform is not, at this stage, an agreement. But it does point to the direction in which the Greek-Chinese shipping relationship is being pushed. Greek shipowners have already become extremely important customers of Chinese shipyards. The next game is bigger: who will finance the ships, who will finance the green transition, and who will stand alongside shipowners as investments become more expensive and technologically more complex. This is where the presence of the Bank of China and the high-level Beijing delegation in Athens becomes interesting. China does not simply want to build more Greek-owned ships. It has every reason to pursue a complete ecosystem of relationships around them: shipyards, financing, technology, alternative fuels and logistics. For the Greek shipping cluster, the stakes are different again: not to remain merely the place where Greek and Chinese interests happen to meet, but to develop into a hub where joint investments are designed and financed. For now, this is a proposal, not a deal. As one senior shipping executive put it, “Beijing rarely sets a table without already looking at its next move.”

$60 billion, new ships, and the trap of the wrong fuel

For Greek shipowners, the question “what fuel are you building for today?” is anything but theoretical. It may be the single biggest investment bet of the next generation. With 725 ships on order, around 70 million deadweight tonnes, and total investment estimated at $60 billion, Greek shipowners are being asked today to make decisions about vessels that will still be sailing once shipping’s energy landscape looks entirely different. What makes this interesting is that Greek owners, traditionally skilled at timing shipping cycles, are this time being asked to get their timing right not just on the ship market but on technology too. The evidence suggests they are in no hurry to bet on a single winning fuel. LNG has clearly taken the lead among alternative fuels, but the logic behind many of these investments is mainly about preserving flexibility: dual-fuel engines, the ability to adapt in future, and, at the same time, continued investment in energy efficiency. This fits rather well with the traditional Greek model. Greek shipowners built much of their strength by buying assets that stay tradeable across different market cycles. Now they are being asked to apply the same philosophy to the energy transition: not to end up with an expensive newbuild that, in ten years’ time, is running on the wrong fuel. That is why the real bet behind the billions currently being poured into Asian shipyards may not be which Greek shipowner correctly predicts whether LNG, methanol or ammonia will win out. It is who will have paid for enough flexibility not to need to predict it at all.

The far right is making our borrowing more expensive

Germany saw a fortress that had stood since 1949 fall the day before yesterday. The AfD won Saxony-Anhalt with 43.8% of the vote, the first outright victory for a far-right party in a German state since the war, taking 39 of 83 seats, just 3 short of an absolute majority. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU collapsed to 17.2%, down from 37.1% in 2021. The state accounts for less than 2% of German GDP, yet the problem has now landed in Berlin. A government with approval ratings at historic lows must now steer a 2027 budget skewed heavily towards defence spending, alongside welfare cuts and pension reform that is meeting resistance even from the party’s own state premiers, on top of record bond issuance of €512 billion this year for infrastructure and defence. The 10-year Bund closed yesterday at 3.35%, just a whisker below last week’s 3.3951%, its highest level in 15 years and 55 basis points above June’s 2.8%. Those basis points are a heavy weight to carry on debt of €2.5 trillion, of which €1.84 trillion is federal government debt, for an economy the IMF expects to grow by just 0.8% this year. Analysts attribute the rise mainly to energy, inflation and the European Central Bank, but are quick to add that political fragmentation is raising the cost of every policy misstep. The Bund is the “floor” of European money. When the eurozone’s benchmark yield rises by 55 basis points in a single quarter, everything in Europe gets repriced: Greece’s 10-year bond, now at 4.05%, corporate bonds, and mortgages tied to the Euribor, with the ECB meeting on Thursday and markets fully pricing in a rate rise to 2.5%. Greece may have its own good story to tell, with its lowest spread in 15 years, but the base interest rate is still set in Frankfurt and Berlin.

When Britain borrows at 5.89% and Greece at 4%

John Healey, who has been Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer since 20 July under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, chose the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry rather than the City for his first big speech yesterday. His message was that “Britain is turning the page” and will become “Growth Britain”, with growth elevated to a “defining mission”. To hit that target, he wants to double the number of British “unicorns”, will grant regulatory “sandboxing” powers to test new technologies, from pavement robots to medical equipment, and will unlock regional investment, mainly in the North, which happens to also be the Prime Minister’s own electoral base. The Chancellor revealed that if interest payments on the public debt were a government department, they would spend more than Defence, the Home Office and Justice combined. Last Tuesday the 30-year gilt touched 5.89%, its highest level since March 1998, while the 10-year hit 5.25%, its highest since 2008. Analysts estimate that, if the sell-off continues, it will squeeze the fiscal headroom for Healey’s first Budget on 28 October from £26 billion to £13.8 billion, with Deutsche Bank putting a “floor” of £10 billion as the level needed to keep markets calm. Healey was notably careful: he committed to the fiscal rules set by his predecessor as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, of “balanced books with a buffer”, and did not rule out new tax rises, saying that responding to speculation would only generate more of it. At the same time, though, he unveiled a plan for an extra £9 billion a year in borrowing for infrastructure and housing, a plan the bond market has already greeted with caution. UK public debt is approaching £3 trillion. Britain is borrowing at 5.25% (10-year) with debt at 94% of GDP, while Greece borrows at 4.05% with debt at 137% of GDP. Markets, in other words, are pricing in trajectory and the credibility of the rules, not simply the stock of debt itself.