Broadcast 27th February 2001

	Listen to an interview with Doctor Panagiotis Alexakis, President of the Athens Stock Exchange

Over the last year the prospect of adopting the Euro currency brought new found confidence in the Greek economy and this tempted thousands of investors to buy shares for the first time.

That drove the market to levels analysts now agree were far too high.

For months share values were volatile, then the Athens Stock Exchange suffered a crisis - stock prices tumbled.



Compared to its high of just over a year ago the benchmark index is down 50 per cent. In recent weeks it appears that volatility is over much to the relief of the market but, not to those investors who are nursing big losses.

President of the Athens Stock Exchange, Doctor Panagiotis Alexakis, says he believes that the market has calmed down:

"It has reached a maturity, which is what we want. We believe we are going to move like that in the future - if you take into account that our exchange is moving to become a mature exchange and we are going to see reduced volatility in the months to come."

That volatility hurt a lot of individual shareholders, people who had never invested in the stock market before. They became rather excited. Prices were going up and up. Then came the crisis.

Part of the market is now worth around half of what it was a year ago. Doctor Panagiotis Alexakis

Dr Alexakis admits it is now very difficult to sell the value of the stock market to shareholders who have lost a fortune.

He adds that the number of investors almost tripled within a small period of time in 1999 and feels that maybe their choices were not the best ones.

The aim now is to try to create confidence in the market and so an extensive program to educate investors has been launched. Dr Alexakis says this includes the introduction of call centres, free of charge telephone lines and printed material all over Greece:

"We tell them that one has to have a long-term perspective for the exchange and has to consult the specialists of the market to make good choices."

Across Europe we are starting to see stock exchanges collaborating. Euronext has been formed, the London Stock Exchange considered a merger with its counterpart in Frankfurt, Germany.

Dr Alexakis says the Athens Stock Exchange is following these developments:

"I believe the Athens Stock Exchange has to enter into one of these cooperations because, what you actually achieve is more members, more products and, more liquidity for your market."

I would like this alliance to be announced at least within the year 2001 - within this year. Doctor Panagiotis Alexakis