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This summer bankers in Athens will probably not go on vacation, and those who will, will probably go just for few days or forever... By September the banking landscape in Greece will undergo dramatic changes with large mergers and shares sales for some financial institutions that can also change their nationality, reports economic weekly “Kefaleo” (Capital). 

The publication first discloses the news of the merger of National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank, rumors of which have swelled so much among the Athens community that they have already became the biggest open secret in the country. The poor fixed state of Piraeus has been discussed for months as a consequence of "opening" up to bad credits. The bank is large enough so bankruptcy is not an option and its buyer most likely will be Greece's largest commercial bank - National Bank of Greece. 

Jolts will not be limited only to small banks, Post bank, for example, which is also openly discussed, will be bought by the Agricultural Bank of Greece. "Kefaleo” reports that even financial giants, as the bank controlled by Spiros Latsis (Eurobank EFG) and Alpha Bank, will undergo turbulent reforms. "Strategic investors" are expected to enter both banks. Levers that will make the upcoming dramatic changes in the Greek banking landscape is the € 10,000,000,000 fund created by the IMF and the EU, which will provide liquidity to Greek banks. The fund will be active from June and will change the labor law, by reducing 50 percent of the amount of compensation for dismissal and will provide more flexible conditions for the redundancies. 

According to senior bank managers, cited by the weekly publication, in the next 10 to 12 months many Greek banks will switch their owners, some will become subsidiaries of large global financial institutions, others will simply be sold to powerful foreign capitals. Only three or four players of today's financial scene in the country will retain their nationality. This means that liquidity of many Greek banks is threatened, although they have available capital in the range of €30-35 billion - €10 billion from the IMF and EU fund and the rest from the state aid of €28 billion, granted by the previous government of Karamanlis and frozen and then activated again by the current government of Papandreou. 

The economic crisis has made life of Greek bankers very interesting. Their contacts with their foreign colleagues have become extremely busy, and their susceptibility to different types of cooperation and even mergers, bigger. Of course any banking transaction to be set on the horizon will need to be pre-approved by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and the European Commission and will strictly be related to the financial recovery procedures.