NYC OTB Prions travel the world and infect

Greeks just as they did NYC OTB. Competence, character, and not taking too much. What they don't teach politicians and union leaders et al.  Cuomo, Silver, Skelos, bankrupt NY State, it might be just like Greece?

• EUROPE NEWS
• Updated May 1, 2013, 6:27 p.m. ET

Greek Sale Advances Privatization Program

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By NEKTARIA STAMOULI

Reuters

A man checks results outside an OPAP shop in Athens on Wednesday.

ATHENS—Greece's government on Wednesday accepted a €652 million ($858.6 million) bid for state gambling company OPAP, OPAP.AT 0.00% marking the first significant asset sale in the country's long-delayed privatization program.
Czech-led private-equity consortium Emma Delta won the bid for the acquisition of a 33% stake in OPAP, Greece's privatization agency said, after improving its earlier bid by €30 million to meet the government's minimum target price.

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Greece will retain 2012 dividends from the company, equal to €60 million, bringing the total bid up to €712 million, the privatization agency said.
"The first big privatization in our country was completed successfully today," Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said.
The Emma Delta consortium is 66.7%-owned by Jiri Smejc, a partner in Czech private-equity fund PPF; analysts say the remaining 33.3% is owned by Greek businessman George Melissanidis.
The bid needs to be reviewed by Greece's Court of Auditors, the privatization agency said, a process that could take several weeks.
The OPAP deal is the first significant privatization Greece has undertaken since the start of the crisis in 2009.
The state-backed gambling monopoly and gas company DEPA are two of the jewels in the country's privatization program, analysts say.
Despite that, OPAP drew only two final bidders and the final price was at the low end of what the government had hoped to receive.
The privatization of DEPA and its gas-network operator, DESFA, with bids expected around May 10, is also seen as a significant test of foreign investors' interest in Greece. So far, in initial rounds, the gas companies have drawn interest from five different investors from Russia, Greece and Azerbaijan, but it remains unclear how many will submit final binding offers.
Earlier this week, Greece's privatization agency received initial expressions of interest for a water utility in northern Greece, Thessaloniki Water Supply & Sewerage SA, EYAPS.AT +0.34% or EYATH. The privatization of EYATH is smaller in scale, but drew interest from strong strategic investors, including France's Suez Environnement SEV.FR -0.41% SA.
Since its first bailout loan in May 2010, Greece has raised about €2 billion from privatizations, missing last year's initial goal of €3 billion. This year it hopes to raise €2.6 billion.
The privatizations of DEPA and DESFA, with OPAP, could cover most of that amount.
Greece has repeatedly scaled back its early goal of raising €50 billion from privatizations by 2019. It now aims for €11.1 billion in privatization proceeds by the end of 2016, €25 billion by 2020 and €50 billion over an unspecified period.
Write to Nektaria Stamouli at nektaria.stamouli@dowjones.com