For sale: Greek islands, hotels and historic sites

As privatisation agency chairman, Stergios Pitsiorlas is seen as the right man to expedite disposal of a growing list of assets

In Greece today, government power comes with few trappings. Unable to tap capital markets and dependent wholly on international aid, the debt-stricken country's senior officials are acrobats in a tightrope act. They are placating creditors, whose demands at times seem insatiable, and citizens, whose shock is never far away.

Few know this better than Stergios Pitsiorlas, the head of Greece's privatisation agency. The agency's asset portfolio - readily available online - goes some way to explaining why. A catalogue of beaches, islands, boutique hotels, golf courses, Olympic venues and historic properties in Plaka on the slopes beneath the ancient Acropolis, it could be a shopping list for the scenery in a movie - rather than a list of possessions that Athens is under immense pressure to offload.

The Germans are going to take everything. I hear that even beaches are up for sale

Related: IMF tells EU it must give Greece unconditional debt relief

We have to run fast and make the changes that need to be made quickly