ATHENS – The Public Power Corporation (PPC) shareholders approved new president and CEO Giorgos Stassis, and five new board members, at a meeting on Thursday.

Secretary General of Energy and Mineral Raw Materials Alexandra Sdoukou said that PPC, despite being the largest investor and employer of Greece, was led to “negative financial results due to wrong policies.”

Stassis, who returned to Greece from abroad to take over PPC, said “the main goal is to return the company to growth” and noted that “the energy sector is growing by leaps and bounds globally, and PPC could not possibly be left out of this.”

The priorities he mentioned were overcoming cash flow difficulties, drafting a new business plan, and working towards growing the utility company.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the board meeting, Stassis said PPC’s cash flow problem was much higher than originally calculated and he said over a 12-month period cash issues exceeded 800 million euros.

Outgoing president Emmanouil Panagiotakis said in his address that the public utility’s financial problems were short-term and that the company had excellent prospects. He said that if the plan his administration had drafted were implemented, the company could increase its EBITDA fivefold by 2022. “PPC is certainly not at the brink of bankruptcy,” he stressed.

He also mentioned that the company “managed to retain nearly 7 million Greek consumers under tough competition circumstances” and that the company had begun to reward consumers for timely payments with a 15 pct discount on bills as of September 2015.

Panagiotakis thanked the shareholders for their confidence and said the future would be bright for PPC, as the country was no longer under loan memoranda, but in a better place.