Private investors seek exemption from Greek haircut

A lobby group representing private investors in the European Union has asked the Greek prime minister to exclude them from a 53.5% haircut on Greek government bonds.
Greece will launch a bond swap for institutional and individual holders of its debt on Friday in an attempt to slice off some of its liabilities, as a condition of the 130 billion euro ($173.08 billion) rescue package to prevent the country from going bankrupt.
"We believe it is highly unfair to treat EU individuals the same way as institutional investors, as EU individuals were excluded from the negotiations and often cannot deduct the losses from their taxes as institutional investors do," Guillaume Prache, Secretary General of Euroshareholders, an umbrella organisation for around 30 national shareholder groups, said in a letter addressed to Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos.
Euroshareholders is a Brussels-based umbrella organisation for around 30 national shareholder associations across the European Union.
"Euroshareholders are kindly asking you to exclude individual bond holders from the forced haircut participation, or at least to make sure that individual investors from the European Union will be able to deduct losses from their taxes," Prache said.
Around 1% of Greek debt is in the hands of private investors, a spokesman for German shareholder lobby group DSW said. DSW is represented by umbrella organisation Euroshareholders.