Hallo from me. I would like to thank the organizers for inviting us.
Rather going through a long speech I’d like to just go through some key points and some, I would say, things that I have seen over the last few months.
The first, I think you would agree all with me that there has been a huge, huge momentum in terms of investment. Investment momentum, people being interested in Greece.
And maybe what makes me most happy of all is that I have seen international investors of highest quality coming back to Greece, which was not the case a few years ago. The quality of the investor base, the quality of people looking in Greece is clearly changing.
The other important thing, which I think is very good again, is that the bracket of the investor base is getting larger. So you are not getting only the investors who used to look at Greece, and who are just increasing the size of the portfolio. What you are seeing is new investors, people who had not looked at Greece, or had shied away from Greece, are now coming back and looking at Greece.
And I think this again is very important.
Part of this obviously has to do with things and with people looking for a safe harbor or at least to do with all the amounts of capital that are available for investment throughout the world and the very low cost of funding.
And I think this translates into the excellent results of the Greek government bonds, actually Greek companies who have been able to get access to debt capital markets.
And also it has shown from the quality of investors, I say this again, for instance in Helliniko we’ve got two excellent international investors looking for casino.
So I think this moment is very important and the challenge here now is to make sure that we can keep it, we can continue having it and that this is translating into further investments.
We have to take this unique opportunity and make sure we do not lose it.
I think there are also some headwinds, and these have not to do so much with Greece, it’s got to do with the international environment, Brexit, trade wars, so on and so forth. So it is important that Greece very quickly translates into a safe harbor, which it is and can continue doing this.
We have a big challenge and I think for us it will help us leave from …maybe into the future is sustainability. And this is a wider theme in Europe, I don’t think we have discussed a lot, it is a huge investment opportunity.
The world is changing, the climate change is here. As Mr. Hoyer, the Chairman of the IIB said: whoever doesn’t believe in climate change is a loser. ….Pie himself said: we don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.
So I think for us in Greece now embracing sustainability, making sure we can get technology early on in Greece, could actually ensure that you are one step ahead of other countries and make sure and …a lot to GDP.
I’ll just two words about the Fund and I’ll leave you.
2019 was a year to plan for 2020, and in 2020 we have a significant amount of projects coming up. We’ve got the Athens International Airport where we are selling 30%, we’ve got Hellenic Petroleum, DEPA which will be …out to infrastructure, supply and distribution.
We also have regional ports, we have the underground gas stores facility in Kavala, we have a nice piece of real estate in Yournes, and much more.
So I would kindly ask you, if you are interested in any of our portfolio come and see us, because we are very interested in hearing your view and also ..with our portfolios.
Thank you very much.
