Piraeus Bank – Talks with Bain Capital about Sunshine

Piraeus Bank is in talks with Bain Capital to sell a portfolio of non-performing leasing contracts as part of its efforts to write off non-performing loans from its balance sheet.

According to sources cited by Reuters, Piraeus Bank’s portfolio of leasing contracts, called the Sunshine project, has a gross book value of about 530 million euros ($ 621 million).

Greek banks have made progress in trying to sell, write off or restructure billions of euros in bad debts that have accumulated during the recent financial crisis.

On Monday, Moody’s upgraded the four largest Greek banks and gave them a positive outlook, saying the move came mainly from improving the quality of their assets and good prospects for further boosting their recurring profitability.

Bain Capital is an alternative multi-asset investment company. Last June, Bain Capital Credit, a group unit, bought 1.6 billion euros in non-performing corporate loans from the National Bank of Greece.

In 2018, Piraeus Bank agreed to sell a portfolio of guaranteed, non-performing business loans of € 1.45 billion to Bain Capital Credit as part of moves to reduce its bad debts.