Isabel dos Santos steps out of BPI with 80 million

  • ECO News
  • 14 February 2017

Isabel dos Santos accepted selling her share of BPI to CaixaBank and has a capital gain surpassing 80 million euros.

Isabel dos Santos no longer is a shareholder in the Portuguese bank BPI: this Monday, the Angolan businesswoman gave a sell order of the 18.5% holding she had on BPI during CaixaBank’s takeover bid of 1.134 euros per share, ECO is aware.

All in all, Isabel dos Santos arrived in 2009, stepped out in 2017 and won more than 80 million euros: Santos’ capital gain comes not only from the sale of the 18.5% holding on BPI, but also from the dividends from 2008 and 2009, worth around 12.6 million euros. In addition, her company Unitel now owns 51.9% of the Angolan bank BFA, which means Fernando Ulrich will be replaced by Mário Silva, manager of Isabel dos Santos’ group, as chairman of the Angolan bank.

Her decision means the success of CaixaBank’s takeover bid on BPI is guaranteed. We should recall that the Catalans already hold 45% of the share capital of the bank headed by Fernando Ulrich — also, the largest Portuguese shareholder, the Violas group, has also given a sale order of their 2.6% holding on BPI.

The outcome of the takeover bid will be known on February 8. BPI increased its profits by 32.5% to 313.2 million euros in 2016.