13/12/2024 (Agence Europe) – On Friday 13 December, the European Commission approved the extension until the end of June 2025 of the Greek ‘Hercules’ scheme, which allows Greek banks to alleviate their balance sheets by securitising their non-performing loans. The Greek government provides a public guarantee to the financial institutions (SPVs) securitising the loans, which is applied to the safest tranches of the securities issued. In exchange for this, they are paid a market price. Approved in October 2019 (see EUROPE 12346/6), this scheme was in force until October 2022, before being reactivated in November 2023. According to the European Commission, this extension should enable non-systemic Greek banks to take advantage of the economic upturn by improving the quality of their assets. In June 2024, the level of non-performing loans in Greece was less than 5% of total outstanding loans. (MB)