Top posts filled in Greek privatisation fund

The former head of Greece's main power group and an Alpha Bank investment manager were named on Wednesday to head the Greek privatisation fund as chairman and chief executive, the government said. The state agency, set up last year to manage a privatisation push demanded by Greece's international creditors, had been hit by resignations in the two top posts. Former chief executive Costas Mitropoulos quit last week, while chairman Ioannis Koukiadis left his post last month and had not yet been replaced. The former head of the Public Power Corporation Takis Athanassopoulos, a professor of banking and financial management at Piraeus University, is the fund's new chairman, the government said. The manager of Alpha Bank's investment banking division Ioannis Emiris will be the new chief executive. In his resignation letter, Mitropoulos cited a lack of government support, underlined major delays and predicted poor asset sales for this year. "Without the government's unreserved support it is clearly impossible to rapidly carry out the privatisation programme," he said. According to Mitropoulos, the fund has managed so far to conclude four privatisations worth 1.8 billion euros ($2.2 billion), far from an overall five-year target of 28 projects worth 19 billion euros. The former chief executive, who had warned in early July that the government had "wasted" precious time, said the programme was at least three months behind. This year's revenue target was three billion euros, but Mitropoulos estimated that asset sales were "unlikely to exceed 300 million in 2012." From ahram