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"The Greek PSI - Private Sector Involvement is as voluntary as the confessions to the Spanish Inquisition". This is the confession of none other than Martin Blessing, the head of Germany's Commerzbank. On the day on which the government is officially announcing its offer to private creditors to write off the Greek debt, the largest foreign banks and insurance companies are reluctant but responsible to the exchange procedure for the Greek securities. Large private creditors perceive it necessary, but small ones want to be excluded from it.
    Martin Blessing openly expressed his opposition to not involving the bonds held by the European Central Bank that are worth 55 billion euro in the PSI procedure. Commerzbank, which is the second largest bank in Germany, lost 1.1 billion euro from the Greek debt in the last quarter of 2011. The Royal Bank of Scotland loses 1.7 billion euro a year, while Credit Agricole, the third largest French bank, loses 220 million euro a quarter from its investment in Greek government bonds. It owns the Greek Emporiki Bank and is especially burdened with Greek bonds.
    The Belgian financial group Dexia as well as the insurance giant Allianz have also declared losses due to the Greek debt. As Deutsche Bank President Josef Ackermann explained on 21 February, banks have agreed to write off a large part of the Greek debt to avoid a chaotic bankruptcy of the country, which would have much more disastrous consequences for the global financial system than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. And according to Martin Blessing, the collective action clause CACs' triggering is part of the agreements reached. In an interview with Reuters, he stated that his bank has developed an action plan in case Greece finally defaults or the euro area disintegrates.
    However, this is not the opinion of individual investors, who have officially turned to Prime Minister Lucas Papademos through Guillame Prache, general secretary of their organization Euroshareholders, with the request to be excluded from the "voluntary" exchange of Greek bonds. Euroshareholders is an organization of 30 countries from Europe and its members are individual shareholders and investors, including Greece and Bulgaria. In the open letter to Papademos, Guillame Prache states that it is extremely unfair for individual investors to be treated the same way as the largest banking giants, as they have not even participated in the negotiations, but their losses are not deductible from the taxes they pay. The letter calls for the exclusion of individual investors from the compulsory write-off of the Greek debt or at least for it to be allowed to deduct the losses from the taxes they pay.
    Despite all the troubles around the Greek PSI, the Athens Stock Exchange closed with a profit as its index grew by 0.42%. The index of big business grew by 0.67%, of medium sized - by 0.11% and the small capital accounted for losses of 1.60%. Surprisingly, banks have recorded a significant growth of shares of 2.12%. The shares of the National Bank of Greece rose by 3.90%, of the Bank of Cyprus – by 2.55%, of Eurobank EFG – by 1.92 percent.