Greece's banks are getting absolutely hammered again in trading today. Just like yesterday, and the day before. The Athens stock exchange is down by 3.4%, but the banks listed on the index are down much further, falling another 10%. They have lost more than a third of their value since Syriza was elected this weekend. It appears that shareholders are not warming to the idea of a radical left-wing government. Here's how that looks for Bank of Piraeus, one of Greece's biggest: Here's the Financial Times on the sell-off: The real danger is that the Greeks themselves lose confidence. There are tentative signs that money is again being sent abroad, as it was in mid-2012. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou at JPMorgan points out that €350m was sent from Greece to Luxembourg money funds since the start of last week. Extrapolating to all cash flight, he estimates as much as a 10th of Greek deposits may have left already this year. If a Greek bank panic develops it will strengthen the German hand, and make negotiations that much harder. Two Greek banks already asked for emergency liquidity assistance before the election, not because they were experiencing a bank run but as a precaution because of the extremely volatile conditions they were seeing. The incoming Syriza government has already been laying out its programme this morning, including halting privatisations and layoffs, and hiking the minimum wage by 10%.Join the conversation about this story »
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