With sustainability and competitiveness as its priorities, Piraeus Bank is now focusing not only on large businesses but also on SMEs, helping them become sustainable, competitive and eligible for financing.
Speaking at the UNEP FI Mediterranean Forum, which opened in Athens yesterday with Piraeus Bank as co-organiser, the bank’s chief executive, Christos Megalou, said it would provide advisory services to SMEs to help them meet the needs of the new era.
Asked which sectors investors were putting their money into, he said shipping, energy, energy storage and data centres were at the forefront of investment choices.
He also noted, however, that the necessary steps had not been taken in the Greek energy storage market. “We are not seeing significant results; much more needs to be done,” he said. Another sector in which Piraeus Bank is a leading player is agri-food.
“The primary sector needs to be strengthened, and we are working with the government to find solutions and help businesses in agriculture develop on the basis of green growth,” he said.
Piraeus Bank’s green financing to businesses amounts to €5 billion. Loans tied to strict ESG criteria, with interest rates also linked to those criteria, total €1.4 billion across 108 loan agreements.
Europe in a difficult position
The sustainability of Europe’s energy model and the problems it creates for the competitiveness of businesses across the continent were the focus of remarks by Theodoros Tzouros, the Piraeus Group’s chief of corporate and investment banking and a member of its Executive Committee.
“We have all seen that Europe pursued a particularly ambitious policy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050,” he said, adding: “But we have also seen coal-fired power plants close across Europe without sufficient replacement capacity being secured. Natural gas was designated a ‘transition fuel’, effectively limiting the scope for new investment. Today, no oil and gas exploration is taking place in Europe.”
As a result of all this, Mr Tzouros said, Europe was “at the mercy of prices”, with natural gas at the TTF hub trading at around $28 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), while the price in the US stood at €3.
“Since the start of the year, the price of natural gas in Europe has risen by around 160%,” he said. “When Europe pays $28 and the US pays $3, it should come as no surprise that we have seen industries close in Europe in recent years, including in the cement, steel, aluminium and fertiliser sectors,” he added.
“Europe has become a ‘price taker’ on critical energy and climate issues. We have announced that we will stop importing natural gas from Russia in 2027. I would remind you that Greece still imports around 50% of its natural gas from Russia,” he concluded.