Piraeus Bank offers to buy Greek state stakes

Piraeus Bank, the fourth-largest Greek lender, made an unsolicited cash bid of €701m for the state’s stakes in two loss-making domestic banks, Hellenic PostBank and Agricultural Bank of Greece, July 2010.

The move could trigger consolidation of the country’s troubled bank sector, which has lost access to funding from interbank markets over fears of a Greek sovereign default, according to analysts.