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In recent months, the Athens Stock Exchange has plunged almost daily. Nevertheless, even for local standards, the daily drop of the index by 6.28 per cent is worth noting - even in times of crisis and imminent sovereign default. The Athens Stock Exchange closed today's session at 730.33 points since, during yesterday's meeting, the finance ministers of the euro zone did not agree on whether to grant Greece the sixth tranche of financial aid. Because the Mediterranean country is desperately lagging behind the objectives set in the Memorandum of financial aid, the ministers preferred to play it safe and wait for the report of the heads of mission of the supervisory Troika.

The negative environment in international markets, the doubts that the Greek debt crisis is not being properly managed and the expectation of greater involvement of private creditors in the remission of the Greek debt plunged the Athens Stock Exchange to its level of June 3, 1993. Turnover stood at the unenviable amount of € 60.35 million. Big business suffered the most, losing 7.61 of its share prices, medium-sized enterprises depreciated by 5.76 per cent and small companies – by 5.52 per cent. As a rule, the Greek banks seriously suffered losing 10.77 per cent of their shares value, although health care companies were hit even more seriously – they lost 13.77 per cent and travel agencies lost 12.4 per cent.

The collapse of the Athens Stock Exchange will be followed tomorrow by another national strike, involving trade unions in both public and private sectors. The protest is against the government's intention to revoke collective labour contracts. This will reduce the minimum monthly wage in the private sector to make it more competitive. Dimitris Daskalopoulos, president of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises characterized as "evil-minded theatre" the claim that the representatives of the supervisory Troika insisted on the revocation of the collective agreements.

"Once again the private sector, which bears no blame for the crisis, is called upon to save the clientelist state. The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises managed to keep the 13^th and 14^th salary in the private sector and proved to the Troika that the problem of the private sector is not the payroll table," said Dimitris Daskalpoulos.