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Greece has between 1,200 to 6,000 islands, according to a range of different estimates, and there is no definitive answer on how many the Greek government owns.

What we do know is that dozens of islands are up for sale and British property agent Knight Frank is predicting a "fire sale" of Greek privately owned islands over the next few years.

If the Greek government does become desperate, it can also hawk off some of its island assets to help raise the €50 billion (£36 billion, $55 billion) that is needed to appease its creditors.

On Private Islands Online, some islands are going for as little as €3 million (£2.1 million, $3.3 million) – that wouldn't even get you a house in an upmarket place in London like Chelsea.

Check out some of these beautiful islands that a could be easily bought by wealthy investors from Private Islands Online.

{http://uk.businessinsider.com/greek-islands-for-sale-and-price-2015-7?r=US#ixzz3fr4B5ov5}

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Meggitt, the UK-based listed engineering group, is rumoured to have kickstarted a strategy review after receiving a takeover approach earlier this year, the Financial Times reported. The market report did not cite a source for the information but said the approach is believed to have come from one of Meggitt’s peers based in the USA.

Rothschild, a long-term adviser to Meggitt, is believed to be putting together plans for a potential defence, the report said. The company is believed to be considering options including a possible merger with Cobham, the UK-listed aerospace and defence group, the item reported.

The report noted that Meggitt hired a new chairman earlier this year, Nigel Rudd, which refuelled longstanding takeover speculation; the US companies Honeywell of Morristown, New Jersey, and Hartford, Connecticut-based United Technologies were tipped as possible acquirers, the report stated.

Meggitt’s house broker, Morgan Stanley, was quoted suggesting that customer companies such as Boeing and Airbus might favour a certain amount of consolidation among their fragmented suppliers. However, they might prefer Meggitt to acquire smaller competitors rather than be sold itself, the broker said.

Morgan Stanley added that a deal with the company’s rivals may incur regulatory interest and prospective trade buyers may not be interested in acquiring Meggitt’s energy operations, which generated 18% of the group’s revenues last year, the item reported.

Meggitt’s share price hit a record high four months ago but since that time has lost 20%, the report noted. The company has a GBP 3.63bn (USD 5.62bn) market cap.

Source Financial Times

"...Meggitt rose 1.3 per cent to 470.5p amid rumours that the defence and aerospace engineer has begun a strategy review following an approach earlier in the year from a US peer.

Rothschild, one of Meggitt’s longstanding financial advisers, was rumoured to be drawing up potential defence plans. A merger with defence contractor Cobham , up 0.9 per cent to 271p, was said to be among the options under consideration.

Meggitt’s appointment of Sir Nigel Rudd as chairman in April revived long-running speculation that it could be a bid target, with United Technologies and Honeywell seen among the potential buyers. Since reaching a record high in March, Meggitt shares have lost 20 per cent..."

Chancellor to reject calls for Britain to take part

George Osborne will reject calls for the UK to take part in the latest Greek bailout, amid anger in Downing Street that the idea had been floated by the European Commission, supported by France.

The chancellor will on Tuesday tell eurozone colleagues that the idea of Britain being on the hook for the Greece rescue package is unacceptable and would be in breach of an agreement between EU leaders in 2010.

He will tell a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels that the so-called European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism — a fund involving all 28 EU members — cannot be used for a bridging loan to Greece.

Britain’s share of the EFSM is thought to be about €1bn. Mr Osborne spoke to Wolfgang Schäuble, his German counterpart, and others on Monday to try to head off a row in Brussels.

“Our eurozone colleagues have received the message loud and clear that it would not be acceptable for this issue of British support for eurozone bailouts to be revisited,” one UK Treasury insider said. “The idea that British taxpayers’ money is going to be on the line in this latest Greek deal is a non-starter.”

The idea of involving Britain in the Greek bailout emerged during acrimonious talks between eurozone leaders in the early hours of Monday morning, to the alarm of some officials in the room.

Several officials raised concerns that the use of emergency cash on behalf of all 28 member states was being discussed without consulting London, where David Cameron’s objections to using the fund is well known.

“We may prevent Grexit but we’d cause Brexit,” said one eurozone official.

EU officials said that Martin Selmayr, the chief of staff to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, was urging the use of the EFSM as a means of unlocking urgent bridge financing.

Greece has caved in to an ultimatum from Germany and its other creditors and agreed to rush through long-resisted economic reforms in a desperate bid to secure a €82bn-€86bn rescue and stay in the eurozone

Further reading

It is understood that France was particularly keen to use the EFSM, whose funds can be activated by a qualified majority vote following a recommendation by the commission.

Greece must pay the European Central Bank €3.5bn on Monday next week, but because the International Monetary Fund is senior to all other lenders, Athens must reimburse the IMF before paying the ECB — meaning Greece must find about €7bn by Monday. Another €5bn is needed in August to meet similar bills.

About half of the €7bn due on Monday can be made up in profits on Greek bonds held by the ECB, profits that were promised to Athens as part of a second bailout agreement in 2012.

But eurozone authorities are struggling to find the rest of the cash quickly, and the EFSM was being sold as a ready pile of money that could be quickly deployed.

David Cameron thought that he had killed off any prospect of Britain being involved in a eurozone bailout during negotiations in 2010, arguing that it would be “quite wrong”.

Leaders at an EU summit in Brussels agreed in 2010 that only eurozone countries should participate in a future bailout of Greece, although Britain would participate through its membership of the IMF.

€7bn

Amount Greece must find to pay the IMF and European Central Bank by Monday next week

Mr Cameron has frequently hailed that decision as one of his negotiating successes in Brussels, but commission lawyers have questioned whether it is legally watertight.

One hardline interpretation sees the agreement at the European Council in 2010 as merely political, not legally binding. The EFSM can be activated through a qualified majority vote, possibly leaving the UK outvoted.

But such legal semantics would not play well in Britain, where any suggestion that the UK should be paying to sort out problems in the eurozone would provoke a strong political reaction.

Mr Cameron, who is planning a referendum on Britain’s EU membership before the end of 2017, would see such a move as deeply unhelpful and liable to fuel euroscepticism.

Blackrock, the asset management group, has increased its stake in listed Italian energy group Enel from 1.7% to 5.008%, Italian language daily Milano Finanza reported. The report cited a statement by Consob, Italy's securities regulator.

If it goes through, deal would be biggest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company

A Chinese state-owned company has prepared a $23 billion bid to buy U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc., people familiar with the matter said, in what could be the largest foreign takeover by a Chinese firm.

Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., China’s largest chip design company, is willing to pay $21 a share for Micron, a 19.3% premium over its Monday closing price, one of the people said. Shares of Nasdaq-listed Micron have fallen by nearly half in the past year. They closed at $17.61 on Monday.

A letter outlining Tsinghua’s bid has been presented to Micron, one of the people said.

A Micron spokesman said the Boise, Idaho, company hasn’t received a buyout offer and declined further comment.

Any deal would likely face close scrutiny by U.S. officials in Washington. One question is whether it would be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a panel of representatives from more than a dozen departments and agencies across the U.S. government.

CFIUS, as the group is known, is charged with determining whether any foreign acquisitions or investments pose a security threat. But the process for determining whether a transaction is subject to CIFIUS review isn’t clear-cut. In many cases, firms involved with a transaction that might raise security concerns are expected to notify the committee, which is chaired by the Treasury Department, and that kicks off a review. However, in some cases, when a transaction isn’t referred to the government by the companies involved, government officials can choose to launch an inquiry of their own.

If CFIUS decides a deal poses a security threat, the transaction can be blocked. In other cases, the prospect of a negative CFIUS ruling has caused companies to drop a transaction on their own.

If a Micron deal goes through, it would dwarf all previous Chinese takeovers of U.S. firms. The previous record was Chinese meat processor Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd.’s $7.1 billion takeover of Smithfield Foods Inc. in 2013, according to data provider Dealogic.

The bid reflects a widening push by the Chinese government to build more domestic sources of semiconductors, which are crucial to consumer products like smartphones as well as equipment used for defense purposes. China is particularly weak in memory chips, having developed none of the key technology needed for the data-storing components.

“They have decided that they really have to buy somebody because they can’t deliver the intellectual property themselves,” said Handel Jones, who is president of the Silicon Valley consultancy International Business Strategies and has written books on China’s high-tech policy.

But a big question mark, Mr. Jones said, is whether the U.S. government would allow a foreign company to buy a supplier of such strategic components.

Micron makes a large portion of its chips in U.S. factories, but has large wafer-fabrication facilities in Asia, including in Singapore and Taiwan. It only has an assembly factory in mainland China.

“I think there is a reasonable probability there will be an issue with government approval given a deal of this size,” Mr. Jones said.

Beijing-based Tsinghua Unigroup already has several links to major U.S. companies. It acquired a controlling stake in Hewlett-Packard Co.’s China networking equipment unit in May. Intel Corp. announced last year it would buy a 20% stake in Tsinghua Unigroup for $1.5 billion.

Tsinghua Unigroup, which was founded in 1988 by China’s elite Tsinghua University, became China’s largest chip design firm in 2013 after acquiring two of the country’s largest mobile-chip firms, Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics.

Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, is the last remaining U.S. maker of the widely used chips known as dynamic random access memory, or DRAMs. It is No. 2 behind Samsung Electronics Co. in that market, and makes the NAND flash memory used to store data in mobile devices such as smartphones.

Founded in 1978, Micron was once a tiny upstart that challenged much larger chip makers in Silicon Valley and around the world. Many manufacturers once made DRAMs, a technology so widely used it has sometimes been called the crude oil of the information age. But most U.S. companies dropped out of the market by the late 1980s, a result of stiff competition from companies in Asia.

Micron’s stock surged last year on stronger prices of memory chips and signs the market was consolidating to a smaller number of players. But Micron’s stock, which closed 2014 at $35.01, has slid lately on worries about the health of the personal-computer market, a major user of DRAMs.

Micron in June reported a 39% drop in profit for the third fiscal quarter ended June 4.

If completed, a Micron takeover would continue a recent wave of consolidation in the chip sector, driven in part by companies struggling to find growth by other means. The largest to date is a $37 billion cash and stock deal for Avago Technologies Ltd. to buy Broadcom Corp. , announced in late May. Shortly afterward, Intel Corp. announced a deal to buy Altera Corp. for about $16.7 billion in cash.

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