ATHENS (Reuters) – Piraeus Bank, one of Greece’s four largest lenders, is in talks with Bain Capital to sell a portfolio of leasing contracts as part of efforts to clear non-performing loans from its balance sheet, bankers close to the talks told Reuters.

Greek banks have made headway in their attempt to sell, write off or restructure billions of euros of bad loans accumulated during the latest financial crisis.

On Monday, rating agency Moody’s upgraded Greece’s four largest banks and gave them a positive outlook, saying the move was mainly due to improving the quality of their assets and good prospects for further increasing their recurring profitability.

Piraeus Bank and Bain Capital were not immediately available for comment.

Piraeus Bank’s leasing portfolio, dubbed Project Sunshine, has a gross book value of approximately € 530 million ($ 621 million).

Bain Capital is a multi-asset alternative investment firm.

In June last year, Bain Capital Credit, a unit of the group, bought back 1.6 billion euros in non-performing business loans from the National Bank of Greece.

In 2018, Piraeus Bank agreed to sell a € 1.45 billion portfolio of secured, non-performing commercial loans to Bain Capital Credit as part of measures to reduce its bad debts.

($ 1 = € 0.8532)

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; editing by Mark Potter)