Greek Stocks Surge on Day of Hope
NEWTON: Finland's finance minister says there has been no progress made toward securing a deal with Greece. Now that's his interpretation. He still said that the glass was half full, but listen to this. Alexis Stubb says Greece had five months and now they've left it to just five days and he's not really keen on the proposals that are on the table right now. Now going into Monday's meetings in Brussels, he did struck - strike - one of the most pessimistic tones yet. Take a listen.</s>ALEX STUBB, FINLAND FINANCE MINISTER: I mean we have an inkling of what Greece has been looking for. But as I said, you know, there seems to be a little bit of a Monday when we have wasted a lot of air miles both on the finance ministers' side and on the prime ministers' side because I don't foresee a breakthrough today.</s>NEWTON: A little bit of travel fatigue there and blaming Greece for it. Now after the meeting, Mr. Stubb spoke to me on the phone from Helsinki and I asked him what needs to happen for him to see progress.</s>STUBB: Oh I'm usually an optimist and I guess the assessment is the glass half full or half empty. I think progress has been made in the sense that we finally have a proposal from the Greeks. It took five months and now we have five days to deal with it. That's the progress. But to be quite honest, it needs to be verified and identified by the European institutions, namely the European Central Bank, the</s>NEWTON: That goes counter to some people who are saying, look, they're going to bend on early retirement - that's going to happen, they're going to extend the VAT. Are these not good enough? Are they not enough yet to get to deal?</s>STUBB: I think what's good enough is what was agreed on in the memorandum of understanding on the 20th of February. They have things that have to do with structural reform, say pensions or labor markets, they have to do with VATs, they have to do with corporate rate taxes, they have to do with tax collection. And we'll just have to look at the overall package and the details. At the end of the day, this is about debt sustainability and about the credibility of both the Greek economy and the Euro area.</s>NEWTON: In terms of the proposals that are there now, if you had to put something on it, are they halfway to where you want them to be, are they three-quarters of the way?</s>STUBB: Well, to be quite honest that's why we have professionals making the assessment. The IMF, the ECB and the European Commission. We the politicians then listen to what the institutions and the economists have to say and make our final assessment. So in that sense I can't tell you whether the glass is half empty or half full at this stage.</s>NEWTON: You sound annoyed. You said we had an agreement five months ago, they're now giving us five days on a wholly new agreement? You sound more than a bit annoyed.</s>STUBB: No, I'm not annoyed. I mean, at the end of the day, we all have to find a deal. It's just a matter of fact that thing have taken quite a long time and we're pushing this to wire. We could have done this I think much earlier had we stuck to all the agreements that were made on the 20th of February.</s>NEWTON: Now Greek stocks, despite what the Finnish finance minister just said, they surge on the day in hope of that possible deal and there was plenty of emotion playing out as you can see from this one-day chart. I mean, what a rollercoaster on that Greek stock exchange. The benchmark utire (ph) at the open, and back down and then finally rested at a nice tidy gain of 9 percent. Now this was interesting - Greece's four largest banks closed up about 20 percent higher, Piraeus up 21 percent, Alpha 24, National Bank of Greece up more than 20 percent and Eurobank up 19 percent. It has to say - these are among the most battered stocks in Greece right now and I think people were betting, look, they've got the liquidity, they can do this, they will be a good bet going forward. Now Thanos Vamvakidis is the head the European G10 Foreign Exchange Strategy for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global and he's here with me in London. I can only imagine what it was like for you on the sidelines today. I mean, with everything that we're hearing, we have concrete proposals on the table from Greece. Do you think this deal can be done? Markets seem to already be saying yes.</s>THANOS VAMVAKIDIS, BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCH GLOBAL: Well clearly it was a step in the right direction. The markets were actually surprised to see how far the Greek government went with these proposals. However, we are not out of the woods yet. The proposals need to be evaluated by the technical teams, and more important is that these proposals by the Greek government are conditional on debt relief. This is extremely important -- in order for the Greek government to be able to approve these proposals which are unpopular measures in the Parliament. Everything has to be discussed in the next few days, time is very, very short and even if everything goes right, it might not be enough time to disburse money to Greece before their payment to the IMF that is due on June 30th. So a lot of challenges still ahead.</s>NEWTON: That's a technical default -</s>VAMVAKIDIS: Yes.</s>NEWTON: -- if that happened.</s>VAMVAKIDIS: That's true. There is flexibility. Although Ms. Lagarde has indicated that if</s>NEWTON: Thanos, I have to ask you. You know, many people today - commentators - have said look, this is not going to be the last Greek crisis we are going to have even if there is a deal by the end of the week. In your opinion, what does Greece really have to do in order to return to any kind of growth scenario? Because that's really what they have to do no matter what kind of a deal they get.</s>VAMVAKIDIS: There are three basic things. Greece needs economic reforms, structural reforms to increase the growth potential of their economy. The Europeans need to put together a plan that addresses Grexit</s>NEWTON: And very quickly I'm just going to lean on you for a minute -</s>VAMVAKIDIS: This is actually the big question. It will help a lot if he gets something on debt relief, but this is a key risk.</s>NEWTON: OK, thank you so much.</s>VAMVAKIDIS: Thank you.</s>NEWTON: Appreciate you being here this evening. Now, call it a case of swift justice. 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