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Athens - The main index of the Athens stock exchange shot up 4.43% to 769.63 points in midday trading on Friday on hopes that Greece will make progress towards a deal to unlock sorely-needed bailout funds.
Eurozone finance ministers are meeting Friday in the Latvian capital Riga, but a senior EU official said there had so far been insufficient progress to unlock €7.2bn in remaining EU-IMF bailout funds that Greece needs to avoid a default and possible messy exit from the euro.
Greek financial website Naftemporiki said the jump in the Athex index was due to investor "euphoria" following a meeting late Thursday between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines of a EU summit in Brussels.
It said "developments over the past days in the negotiations between Athens and its creditors" was behind the rise, along with "some progress towards a deal that could see a part of the last tranche" of the €7.2bn in EU-IMF bailout loans being handed over to Greece.
While Tsipras expressed confidence of eventually reaching a deal, EU Commissioner for the Euro Valdis Dombrovskis said on Friday that there was insufficient progress for eurozone finance ministers to approve releasing more bailout loans.
Athens is fast running out of money to both pay its creditors and finance everyday domestic affairs, raising the risk of a default and a potentially chaotic exit from the single currency bloc.
The bailout loans will be key in helping Athens meet loan payments to IMF and ECB in coming months.
