Greek banks get a nearly 20 billion euro boost

Greece's four largest banks received an 18 billion euro boost Monday.

The money, distributed by what is called the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility, was part of a long-awaited capital injection in order to regain access to funding from European Central Bank (ECB), Reuters reported.

The injection is in the form of bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund.

The four banks involved are National Bank, Alpha, Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

Read more on GlobalPost: Greek crisis: Bank runs and the ghost of the Great Depression

Greece's largest bank, National Bank, will receive nearly 7 billion euros, followed by Piraeus bank at 5 billion euros, Bloomberg said.

Shares in the banks jumped today at the news.

Greek banks have been recently unable to raise funds on international markets and have come to rely on the ECB for funding, said the BBC.

Earlier this year, a debt-swap deal that wrote down Greek bonds, incurred huge losses in Greek banks who held part of the country's debt.

This is the fifth year of Greece's economic crisis.