| Alpha Bank’s Panorama of Olympic Sports toured 64 Greek cities |
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he
largest private bank in Greece, Alpha
Bank, has attained a high profile position as Grand National Sponsor
of the Olympic Games, at the same time as showing a 64.5 per cent increase
in quarterly group profits.
The bank, the second largest overall in the country, has a network of
branches both within Greece and throughout Southeastern Europe. In terms
of corporate credit, it has the biggest market share among Greece’s
five biggest banks.
“We are the best in corporate banking and provide state-of-the art investment banking advisory services,” says Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yiannis Costopoulos (INTERVIEW).
The bank is pursuing a zero cost policy and expects to generate annual cost savings of up to 30 million euros (almost £20 million) from 2006 onwards through reorganisation and use of new technology. At the heart of the project is the establishment of a single back office organisation for the entire operation. “We are building a single IT platform for bank subsidiaries abroad and we are working towards fully automating all transactions and towards electronic management and filing of documents,” Mr Costopoulos explains.
Alpha Bank also expects to benefit from its high profile as the Official Bank of the 2004 Athens Games. “We researched the opportunity thoroughly and consulted extensively with previous Olympic banking sponsors about their level of engagement. We expect the long-term impact to be significant. We are convinced that in ten years’ time people in Greece will still remember who the official Olympics bank was.”
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The bank’s three-year Panorama of Olympic Sports campaign has spread enthusiasm for the Games and promoted some of the lesser known Olympic sports with a tour of 64 major Greek cities.
Alpha Bank is poised to absorb Delta Singular, the country’s largest IT firm by market capitalisation, in a move that will boost the bank’s net profit by 50 million euros (£33 million) by the end of this year.
Alpha originally started providing services to third parties through Delta, and when the credit card business began to grow Delta became an important channel for outsourcing some of the bank’s IT business. Delta is now proposing to sell the outsourcing business to US group First Data, which will thereby secure a long-term agreement to provide payment processing and related services to Alpha Bank.
Tel: +44 20 76296213, Fax: +44 20 74953707 - [email protected]