Athens Stock Exchange opened, stocks plummet

The Athens Stock Exchange was reopened today, after a five-week shutdown caused by the introduction of capital controls in Greece with the aim of preventing capital outflow from the country.

Upon the reopening of the stock exchange, the main index of the Athens Stock Exchange plunged nearly 23%, whereas the shares of the National Bank of Greece, the biggest commercial bank in the country, dropped 30%, Reuters reports.

The Athens Stock Exchange was last opened for trading on June 26th, when the Greek government closed banks and introduced capital controls to prevent capital from leaving the banks.

When it comes to other shares on leading stock exchanges in Europe, they were in slight decline this morning. Namely, the London stock index FTSE 100 sank 0.10% to 6,689.93 points, the Frankfurt stock index DAX 30 lost 0.12% in value and dropped to 11,295.50 points, while the Paris stock index CAC 40 went down 0.11% to 5,076.80 points.