The Street – Hedge funds have repeatedly come to Greece, in expectation of outsized profits in the long run. During Greece’s six year long recession, the troubled economy has twice sought help from bailout programs. While there is nothing rosy about the recovery yet, the demand for Greek assets runs high. Over the past few years, nearly every high profile hedge fund manager has invested in Greek debt and/or equities and they are still in hot pursuit of any actionable opportunities.
A comment from CEO of Piraeus Bank, Anthimos Thomopoulos, sums up the situation aptly: “Only nine months ago, global sentiment was, ‘I don’t want to touch anything Greek, not even Greek yogurt, now investors don’t want to see anything but Greece. It’s a strange, idiosyncratic market, where you put money in a developed economy, albeit in distress, with emerging-market type of growth expectations with a strong currency.”
