Greek Market Reopens: Shares Set To Fall 20%

The Athens Stock Exchange is expected to plunge 20% today as markets reopen for the first time in five weeks.

They have been closed whilst capital controls have been in place.

The volatility limit for Greek stocks has been reduced from 30% to 20%, which means that the maximum daily fall for Greek stocks is now 20%.

The Athex Large Cap index which measure the performance of Greece's largest listed companies closed at 241.22 points on Friday June 26. Since then in has remained closed. This makes the combined value of the index £13.4bn (€19bn).

This means that if, as expected, 20% is wiped off the value of the market £2.7bn will be lost.

Over the last five years, as the economic turmoil escalated, the Athex Large Cap Index lost more than 75% of its value.

The largest five companies listed in Greece are Coca-Cola Hellenic - the world's second largest Coca-Cola bottler - Hellenic Telecom, National Bank (NYSE: NBHC - news) of Greece, Opap - which runs the Greek national lottery - and Alpha Bank (Other OTC: ALBWF - news) .

Bank recapitalisation is set to dominate talks between the Syriza government and Greece's creditors this week as the next repayment deadline on 20 August draws closer.

On Thursday, the IMF announced that it will refuse to participate in a new bailout until there is debt relief. IMF head Christine Lagarde on Wednesday said that debt restructuring was "becoming a commonly accepted view" and that "it's inevitable that there is an element of debt restructuring".