Update: Athanasios Vamvakidis, a Bank of America executive who was sitting in the London meeting, said in a radio interview on Vima FM Friday that “what the memo states was simply not presented in our meeting with Syriza”, adding that the Capital Fund executive who allegedly wrote it was not present in said meeting.
Investors in London were reportedly reeling in shock, after a briefing by senior Syriza officials of the party’s policies, and will sell off their assets in Greece, if the main opposition party comes to power, according to Joerg Sponer, a senior ranking executive of investment managers, Capital Fund, the New money (Link in Greek) news site said on Wednesday.
Although on Thursday Syriza denied that Sponer – who has reportedly invested over half a billion euros in Greece, including €300 million in Eurobank – attended the briefing by the party’s top two economic advisers, Giorgos Stathakis and Yiannis Milios, the confidential memo Sponer sent to investors (obtained and published by the Proto Thema news site) with the conclusions of the meeting, states, among others, that ‘everybody coming out of the meeting wants to sell everything in Greece’.
Read here the list, posted by New Money, of the people that attended the London meeting.
In his -infested with typos and syntax errors – memo,Sponer confirmed he attended the meeting of ten investors with Stathakis and a separate one of 20 investors with Milios. He described Syriza’s programme as ‘total chaos’.
A massive run on deposits
“The program is worse that Communism (at least they had a well-thought true plan)”, he said, adding that he thought their analysis sounded more like a joke and feared a ‘massive run on deposits’.
If Syriza gets an absolute majority and comes to power, he expects “a Cypriot scenario – a massive run on deposits, corporate clients moving everything they can abroad and a complete stop of FDI/Investments”.
“If they weren’t that serious when talking, I thought this was a theatre play”, he wrote.
‘What a joke’
According to Sponer’s memo, the five cornerstones of Syriza’s programme are:
- the provision of free electricity, food shelter and healthcare to everyone in need
- a wage increase for everyone to a minimum of €750 x 14 and for pensioners €750 x 13 and the hiring of several thousands by the government.
- a primary surplus of 1% by a sudden stop to the black economy, as poor people earning €750 per month will not have an incentive to engage in the black economy (Sponer’s response to this was, again: ‘what a joke’) – no more property taxes (saving €2 bln), cutting all taxes to 20% except high income earners (at a cost of €2 bln) which will be paid by the €70 bln of unpaid taxes.
Sponer mocked their projected GDP growth of 3.5% if Syriza came to power, writing ‘LOL” in brackets next to the assertion of Stathakis and Milios that small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) will then invest in Greece with confidence and their expectation of huge foreign direct investment (FDI).
- A renegotiation of sovereign debt.
Entailing, among others, that the European Central Bank (ECB) would buy the entire Greek debt for 60 years and forfeit any interest (Germany got a 62% debt haircut in 1952, so Greece should get one too).
Sponer said that when he mentioned that “Germany also embraced huge structural reforms at the same time, both said that structural reforms [in Greece] went too much already”. The programme also includes, according to Sponer, “Greek debt to GDP to go to 20% by 2080. (hahahahaha what a joke)”.
- A debt moratorium of private debt with a maximum debt servicing of 20% of disposable income above €750 per month
Sponer ended his memo saying he couldn’t have made it up ‘even if I wanted to’.