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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Former Goldman Sachs banker to be Greece’s debt chief

A former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley trader has been appointed as Greece’s new head of public debt.

Petros Christodoulou is to take charge of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency following the departure of Spyros Papanicolaou from the post.

Mr Christodoulou previously worked as the National Bank of Greece’s head of treasury while also undertaking various positions with investment banks JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Charles Diebel, senior interest-rate strategist at Nomura International Plc in London, told Bloomberg: “The incoming guy is walking into a tough mandate.“

“Such is the sentiment towards Greece at the moment, a new broom could be a positive,” he explained.

The new post holder will be working on reducing Greece’s budget deficit which is the equivalent to 12.7 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

EU recommends that nation states keep their debt levels to less than three per cent of GDP.

Goldman Sachs and the Greek government are currently facing scrutiny from the European Union after it was claimed that a series of debt swaps between the two took place to massage the state’s financial figures.

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