Athens Day 1

JThis morning we had a 9am gathering time. Our first visit was to Alpha Bank in downtown Athens. What is really fun about being in Athens is that our professor is an Athens native and has no problem interjecting into our tour guide's ongoing narrative. We met with Alpha Bank's chief economist who was significantly more optimistic than you might have expected. Overall, the Greeks seem to be on the upswing, at least in spirit.

Fun facts:

-Alpha Bank is one of the oldest private banks in Greece

-Greece's GDP is down 16% since 2009

-A lot of money was spent getting ready for the 2004 Olympics. There were a lot of short term improvements, but they need to find new uses for some of the sites.  

After Alpha Bank, we got lunch at Titania's Olive Garden, which is the hotel's rooftop restaurant. We had some amazing amazing food. We started with a salad that was mostly tomatoes. I am afraid I am going to burn out on tomatoes, didn't know it was possible. The restaurant had amazing views of the acropolis and we took some pictures.

After lunch, we headed to S&B, a mining company. S&B is in the fortunate position of having most of its customers outside of Greece, so they are mostly isolated from "the crisis". We had a brief tour of the labs, which were significantly less tidy than the labs I am used to. 

Fun facts:

-S&B did €470 million in sales in 2012.

-They are highly diversified. No customer is responsible for more than 5% of their annual revenues. Only 7% of their sales are domestic.

-S&B is family owned (61% of shares)

-Acquired NYCO (of upstate NY) in 2012

This evening, we had a Northeastern Alumni event at Athens College (actually a primary and secondary school). It was really fun and a very different experience from Istanbul.
It's 11 here and we have another early start tomorrow. Will try to elaborate on this post tomorrow!