Piraeus Bank agrees to sell bad loans pool to APS

Piraeus Bank, Greece’s largest lender by assets, has agreed to sell a 400 million-euro pool of soured, unsecured consumer loans to distressed debt specialist APS Holdings, bankers close to the transaction told Reuters.

According to the Newspaper "Kathimerini", the project, dubbed Arctos, involves a pool of about 220,000 non-performing credit card and consumer loans and is part of efforts to shrink the bank’s bad-debt load.

“The Arctos pool will be sold to APS,” one of the bankers told Reuters, declining to be named. “The deal will close next week.”

Piraeus Bank was in advanced talks with three short-listed buyers – APS Holdings, Intrum and EOS – to sell the loan portfolio.

Active in distressed debt markets, APS Holdings has been buying, servicing and advising on non-performing loan (NPL) portfolios since 2004.