Investors, those buying the shares, are the ones who set the price for the shares.
It also made it mandatory for the country's regulatory body, the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, to accept book-building prices, even if they were not properly reflecting share values.
So a law was passed that allowed buyers to set the price, and then required the sellers to sell at that price.
The foreign investors valued the four banks at about $800 million, which is more than three times less than their current market value of $3 billion.
What do you know? The buyers set the value of the banks assets at 27% the market value, crushing the stock prices. Those same buyers then swooped in and bought up controlling shares of the banks. And all perfectly legal because of the laws passed by the Greek Parliament.
That was the ripoff.
They added $6.42 billion in capital to banks that had a market value of $3 billion.
And how the hell is something three times less? It's one third of the value, not three times less the value. Aren't there editors to check these stupid articles before they're published?
Those same buyers then swooped in and bought up controlling shares of the banks.
Yeah, controlling shares of money losing banks with $114 billion in non-performing loans.
That was the ripoff.
The headline said a $400 billion ripoff. If they stole the entire market value of these banks, that would have been $3 billion.