The European Commission announced, on Tuesday 28 November, that it had authorised the re-introduction of the Greek asset protection scheme for Greek banks known as ‘Hercules’ which had expired on 9 October 2022 (see EUROPE B12346A6). This scheme is designed to extract non-performing loans (NPLs) from the balance sheets of beneficiary Greek banks through a state-guaranteed securitisation mechanism.
In practice, a private securitisation vehicle buys NPLs from banks and offers...