More generally, the Greek banks have benefited from a number of monetary policy measures taken by the ECB, such as interest rate cuts and targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs).
They have also benefited from the public sector purchase programme (PSPP), by selling to the Eurosystem notes (of up to an amount of € billion) that had been issued and contributed by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to strengthen the capital base of Greek banks. The sale of EFSF notes could bring capital gains of some € million to Greek banks.