Reuters first with EU report on Greece

The Reuters Berlin bureau was flooded with calls from clients in banks and brokerages across Europe and as far away as Tokyo minutes after it obtained on June 8, well before other news sources, a copy of a long-awaited report on Greece by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The report said the Greek fiscal adjustment programme was under-financed and a privatization agency would be set up to sell off state assets. It also warned that Greece’s recession would be longer and deeper than initially thought — a prediction backed up one day later when Athens announced that first-quarter gross domestic product had shrunk much more than expected, triggering a fresh rise of Greek bond yields. Other news sources picked up the Reuters story or obtained the report much later in the evening or on the next day.