“Greece welcomes participation of foreign institutions in its banking system,” says BoG governor

He noted that further participation of global financial institutions on the path toward a European banking union would be clearly welcome. Stournaras said that cross-border mergers are an important step for implementing the EU banking union, overcoming the current fragmentation of the European market and achieving economies of scale. The recent example of Alpha Bank, which entered into a strategic partnership with Unicredit in 2023, is indicative of how welcome such investors are in Greece. Alpha Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank posted combined net profits of 2.4 billion euros in the first half of 2026, 2% more than in the same period last year. Now that Alpha Bank is effectively tied to UniCredit, analysts are focusing primarily on Piraeus Bank and Eurobank as potential targets.