Eurobank EFG’s Top Management carried out a two-day tour of Crete where the Bank operates 19 branches.

In his speeches, attended by about 250 entrepreneurs in Chania and more than 800 in Heraklion, Eurobank EFG’s CEO, Mr Nicholas Nanopoulos, noted that “our economy should be able to produce high quality, value added products and services, and export these with competitive terms”. Mr. Nanopoulos stressed the need to support sectors that have strong comparative advantages such as quality tourism, agricultural production and the processing of agricultural products, the development of alternative energy sources and shipping.

He added, “We must move to a new growth model, open and without guilt, seeking to stimulate private initiative and sound entrepreneurship which should be a driving force in this process. In this new model, banks should contribute decisively to the new growth orientation and comprehensively and substantively strengthen our country’s production and business forces. Eurobank EFG has fully undertaken its share of the responsibility to participate in the necessary commitment of forces to respond to new challenges”.

In addition, Mr. Nanopoulos noted, “the state must venture organizational and institutional reforms aimed at strengthening competition and the opening of closed markets and professions, reducing bureaucracy and increasing transparency and productivity in the public sector”.

Eurobank’s CEO, accompanied by the Deputy CEO, Mr Byron Ballis and the General Managers, Messrs Michael Vlastarakis, George Marinos, Evangelos Kavvalos, Panagiotis Mantas and senior executives of the Bank, visited the Bank’s branches and units in Crete where the Group operates 19 branches and employs more than 220 people. In parallel, apart from the four specialized banking units for medium and large enterprises, there are also a Private Banking unit, a Leasing unit and three offices of Eurobank EFG Securities. The Bank’s executives held meetings with productive groups, organizations and representatives of the Primary and Secondary Local Government. During meetings with the chair of the Trade Associations and Hoteliers’ Unions, Eurobank EFG's management had the opportunity to develop and analyze the recent initiatives to bring the economy into a new course of long-term growth, and presented the products and services offered by the Bank to businesses and households to overcome this difficult junction with minimum effects.