“No gains” for Santander Totta in the agreement on swaps

  • ECO News
  • 27 April 2017

The agreement on swaps between the Government and Santander Totta predicts a 2.3 billion euros loan from the bank to the State, but there are "no gains" for Totta. Santander group increases profits.

António Vieira Monteiro, CEO of Santander Totta, clarifies there are “no gains” for Santander Totta in the agreement the bank made with the Portuguese State concerning the toxic swaps purchased by public companies. The parties involved dropped the legal proceedings in court and the Portuguese Executive accepted to fully pay the contracts, in exchange for a discount of around 500 million euros in a loan granted by Santander itself. The loan will be made through a direct bank financing, discloses the CEO in the presentation of the first quarter results.

It was on April 12 that Santander Totta and the Government reached an agreement on swaps. But this agreement will not bring any gains to the bank headed by António Vieira Monteiro, he states, without adding any further details. “Those contracts were made with clients. We are limited. By law, we are not able to give that information. It must be given by the State”, Monteiro states.

Santander increases profits by 14% in the first quarter of 2017

As for the Spanish banking group Santander, it disclosed this Wednesday, in Madrid, that they had made a 1,867 million euros profit in the first quarter of the year — the same is to say that profits increased 14.3%. The banking group also benefited from their activities in Portugal which grew 3.8% in comparison to the first quarter of 2016, reaching 125 million euros in attributable profit. Nonetheless, the largest growth took place in Latin America, mainly Brazil, a market in which profits had a 76.8% increase.

"In Portugal attributable profit increased by 4% to €125 million compared to Q1 2016 with growth in loyal customers, lower cost of credit and strong cost control offsetting a reduction in revenues due to portfolio sales made in 2016.”

Santander

Press release

“The economies of all our core markets are expected to grow this year and we are confident that our business model, combined with the consistent execution of our strategy, position us well to continue delivering for our customers and teams while growing profitably in the years ahead”, has stated the chairwomen of the Santander group, Ana Botín, in the press release.