Privatization Chief Quits After Another Misstep In Big Greek Asset Sales

One of the ways Greece plans to dig itself out of debt is through the sale of state-owned assets. But that effort has been besieged by missteps.

The latest involved Stelios Stavridis, the chairman of the government privatization agency, who had overseen one of the country’s first big asset sales — a one-third stake in the state gambling company, OPAP, for 652 million euros. But then he hitched a ride to a vacation spot on the private jet of a Greek oil magnate involved in the deal.

Government officials insisted that Mr. Stavridis’s ouster from the privatization agency, Taiped, was “for ethical reasons” and would not upset the country’s state sell-off effort. But the privatization program has suffered from political upheaval and delays and has fallen far short of the revenue targets set by Greece’s so-called troika of foreign creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, on Sunday sought Mr. Stavridis’s resignation from Taiped after a newspaper quoted the chairman as saying he had traveled last week on the Lear jet of the oil and shipping oligarch Dimitris Melissanidis, a major stakeholder in the Greek-Czech consortium Emma Delta, which agreed to buy the OPAP stake in May.

The contract was signed Aug. 12 after much wrangling over the details. A few hours later, Mr. Stavridis, a 65-year-old Swiss-trained engineer, joined the oil magnate on his plane, which dropped Mr. Stavridis on Cephalonia, an island in the Ionian Sea where he spends his summer vacations. “Melissanidis, who was traveling to France, offered to take me with him to accommodate me,” Mr. Stavridis was quoted as telling the Proto Thema newspaper, which published a photograph of him, smiling, sitting next to a flight attendant.

Speaking to the Greek private television channel Skai after his firing on Monday, Mr. Stavridis defended his decision to fly on Mr. Melissanidis’s jet, noting that the trip had come long after the OPAP deal was completed. He referred to “hypocrisy” in Greek society which, he said, was interested in “the facade rather than the essence.”

“I am not a monk and I won’t hide,” said Mr. Stavridis, who founded Piscines Ideales, one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of swimming pools in 1991. More recently, he was head of the Athens water board, Eydap, which is also in the country’s privatizations portfolio.

Less than six months ago, Mr. Stavridis’s predecessor, Takis Athanasopoulos, was accused of a breach of faith during a previous stint at the head of the state electricity board. Prosecutors accused him of commissioning a power station in central Greece even though he knew it could not operate profitably.

The main left-wing opposition party, Syriza, which has vowed to reverse all privatizations if it comes to power, said Taiped was “a tool of the troika” whose goal was “the biggest sell-off of state wealth that Europe has seen since the era of East Germany.” In a statement on Monday, Syriza described the Stavridis affair as “the first clear admission of the dirty relationship between the government of the memorandum and business interests,” referring to the Greek deals for foreign loans.

The troika has urged Athens to speed up state sell-offs and to step up tax collection to raise much-needed money. But revenue targets have been revised downward several times. The original target of 50 billion euros by 2016 was later changed to 19 billion euros, then to 15 billion euros. Since last year, the troika has focused on annual targets. But Taiped is expected to fall 1 billion euros short of its 2.5 billion euro target for 2013.

Media Decoder Blog: Olympics and Asset Sales Help Lift Comcast Profits

Aided by the sale of assets and a lift from the Summer Olympics, Comcast reported strong third-quarter growth on Friday, surpassing expectations on several crucial measures.

The nation’s largest cable company said its net income rose to $2.11 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $908 million, or 33 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Most of the increase was attributed to the sale of spectrum to Verizon Wireless and the sale of its 15.8 percent stake in A&E Television Networks. Excluding the sales, net income was $1.25 billion, or 46 cents a share, in line with analysts’ estimates.

The company’s overall revenues rose to $16.5 billion, beating estimates. Its core cable business lost 117,000 of 22 million video subscribers, not quite as many as analysts had forecast — and more importantly, 29 percent less than were lost during the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, its broadband business gained 287,000 subscribers, topping 19 million for the first time, a bit more than forecast.

Most importantly for Comcast, its average video subscriber paid more than ever for its services, topping $150 a month for the first time — more than offsetting the slight decline in total subscribers. Total revenues for video, broadband, business services and the rest of the Cable Communications business totaled at $9.97 billion, up from $9.33 billion in the same quarter last year.

Comcast’s other business, NBCUniversal, which it took over last year, also posted gains in the third quarter, thanks in part to the broadcast of the Summer Olympics in July and August. So much for a projected $200 million loss on the Olylmpics; in the third quarter the company reported $120 million in profits from the Games, due in part to higher-than-expected television ratings. Over all, when other revenues and expenses are added up, NBC will break even on its investment, Comcast’s chief financial officer, Michael Angelakis, said Friday.

The Olympics lifted NBCUniversal’s broadcast television segment to a $88 million profit of the quarter; without the Games, broadcast would have reported a $32 million loss, somewhat worse than the $7 million loss in the same quarter last year. Comcast’s earnings release cited two reasons for that: “higher programming costs” because NBC started some of its fall shows earlier than usual, and expenses tied to news coverage of the presidential election.

Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, told investors on a conference call Friday morning that NBC was “off to a very strong start in this prime time season.” The network has been winning in the advertiser-friendly demographic of adults 18 to 49 for seven weeks.

“It’s certainly early, but I believe and hope we are seeing the beginning of a turnaround at NBC,” Mr. Roberts added.

Including $1.2 billion in Olympics revenue, NBCUniversal as a whole posted $6.8 billion in revenue, up from $5.2 billion in the same quarter last year. The cable networks segment, an umbrella for channels like Bravo and E!, showed no advertising revenue growth in the quarter, but showed slight growth overall thanks to higher per-channel subscriber fees. The film segment showed a 24 percent revenue gain, to $1.4 billion, thanks to successful theatrical releases like “Ted” and “The Bourne Legacy.”

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