Euronext Athens, the operator of the Greek stock exchange, marked its 150th anniversary on Monday, even as a new report from Morgan Stanley showed how much ground the market still has to make up with international investors.
Only one in four developed-market funds in Morgan Stanley's sample currently holds Greek stocks, the bank found. That is 25%, compared with 84% for Spain and 90% for Italy.
The figures come from Morgan Stanley's report titled "Aegean Alpha: Still Constructive, but the Setup May Change in 2027," published on September 8. Euronext Athens has operated the Greek capital market for a century and a half.
The anniversary lands just ahead of a major reclassification. On September 21, index providers FTSE and STOXX will move Greece into the developed-markets category. MSCI, a separate and closely watched index provider, follows on May 31, 2027. Morgan Stanley noted that funds tracking MSCI indexes are roughly twice the size of those tracking FTSE, giving the later switch particular importance for large long-only managers.
Foreign Fund Inflows Accelerating
While index-driven inflows draw the most attention, Morgan Stanley said the larger pool of money sits with active managers, who pick their own markets and companies rather than following an index, and who have increasingly begun to notice Greece.
In September 2025, just 12% of European long-only funds in Morgan Stanley's sample had exposure to Greece. By June 2026, that share had climbed to 30.9%. Among international funds more broadly, exposure rose from 17% to 30.9% over the same period, more than doubling in nine months, according to the bank.
A Wave of Corporate Investment
For fresh money to keep arriving, Morgan Stanley noted, listed companies need something new to offer, and the Greek market's lineup looks very different than it did a few years ago. Non-financial listed companies spent about 2.8 billion euros on capital expenditure in 2020, rising to 8.2 billion euros in 2025. Morgan Stanley projects the figure to reach 10.3 billion euros in 2026 and 11.2 billion euros in 2027, a fourfold increase over seven years.
The bank said fixed investment in Greece has risen almost 90% since the end of 2019, the largest increase in the eurozone, and forecasts roughly 7% annual investment growth in both 2026 and 2027. It pointed to power grids, renewables, industry, data centers, defense, infrastructure, concessions and fiber optics as new areas opening up for listed companies.
PPC and Metlen Lead the Charge
Public Power Corporation, known as PPC, Greece's largest electricity utility, sits at the front of this investment wave. Its program for 2026 to 2030 totals 24.2 billion euros, with about 12.5 billion euros earmarked for Greece, 95% of it for growth projects. In Kozani, in northern Greece, PPC is also planning a data center tied to the artificial intelligence economy. The first phase envisions 300 megawatts of capacity and about 1.2 billion euros in capital spending, with a possible next phase raising capacity to 1 gigawatt.
Metlen, the industrial and energy group, is entering its own investment cycle, with about 2.5 billion euros in capital expenditure planned through 2028, more than half of it inside Greece. Its agenda spans bauxite, alumina, gallium, defense and energy, a mix that bore little resemblance to what foreign fund managers were looking for in Athens a few years ago.
Banks Rank High, Gap Persists
In Morgan Stanley's European sector model, Greek banks rank third among roughly 30 European sectors, behind semiconductors and European banks generally, based on earnings revisions, target price changes, valuations and corporate activity.
Yet the exposure gap remains wide. Just 16% of developed-market funds hold Greek bank stocks, compared with 35% for Spanish banks and 47% for Italian banks. That matters because Greek banks are expected to account for about 80% of the country's weighting once Greece completes its move to developed-market status.
Despite a strong rally in recent years, Morgan Stanley calculates that Greek banks trade at roughly a 10% discount on price to earnings terms compared with the European banking sector for 2028, while offering higher expected growth in tangible book value and dividends.
What Comes Next
Apostolos Manthos, the article's author and head of technical analysis and investment strategy at Kefalaio, wrote that Athens needs more than strong returns and index upgrades over its next 150 years. He said the market needs new listings, larger free floats, more liquidity, and companies willing to use the capital market to fund their next investment. He added that Greece also needs to bring back sectors where it holds a strong global business presence but has almost no stock market footprint, citing shipping as the clearest example.
If the move to developed-market status attracts a larger international investor base that meets a new generation of Greek listed companies, Manthos wrote, the anniversary will prove worth far more than an evening of speeches. He said the 25% figure, the current share of developed-market funds holding Greek stocks, is the number worth watching in the years ahead, along with how many international portfolios add Greek shares for the first time and how many new companies the market can attract.
The article was republished from the newspaper Kefalaio.
