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National Bank of Greece was surprised by the decision of the board of directors of Alpha Bank to reject the proposition for a merger of two financial institutions, says the official report of the Greece's largest commercial bank. According to it, in the negotiation process Alpha Bank has not given any signals that hey might reject the offer. Experts from the National Bank of Greece continue to argue that the proposal was for a friendly merger and the interests of the shareholders of Alpha Bank were protected. "The shareholders of Alpha Bank were offered an extremely high premium even for the European standards," says the communication.
    If the merger had occurred, it would have led to the formation of a bank colossus on the Greek financial market. The new institution would have controlled 36.5 percent of the investments in the country and 33 per cent of the loans. This is a share more than twice larger than the share of the next largest bank in Greece, Eurobank EFG.
    With great interest the analysts expect the retorted move of the bank controlled by Spyros Latsis. In the summer of 2010 was expected the deal between Eurobank EFG and Alpha Bank, which ultimately did not take place due to the lack of an agreement between Spiros Latsis and the president of Alpha Yiannis Kostopoulos. Analysts do not exclude the opportunity for Latsis to renew his proposal, this time with a better offer for the shareholders of Alpha Bank. The financial circles, however, does not exclude the possibility for Eurobank EFG to undertake initiatives also towards foreign banks. Again this summer the financial institution of Spiros Latsis made some research moves towards the British HSBC, a bank recently it sold to Austria's Raiffeisen Bank, its subsidiary in Poland.
    The small Greek banks create a problem for the supervisory troika of the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank, which for almost a year has been insisting on the mergers between them and on the creation of more powerful financial institutions. The experts from the troika have repeatedly suggested for the Greek financial institutions to proceed to an increase in their capitalization, sale of the subsidiary banks in Southeast Europe, to a merger of subsidiary banks and especially to a merger of the banks in Greece themselves. Representatives from Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington are adamant that the merger of banks will make them more resistant to any eventual future turbulence in the financial market.
    Currently in Greece in addition to the state Farm Bank and Postbank are also operating the National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank, Eurobank EFG, as well as the banks Emboriki, Geniki, Millennium, Attica, Marfin Investment Group, Proton.