After its failure, the Government relaunches the sale of the Bank Efisa

The Portuguese Government reopened the privatization process of the Bank Efisa. The Portuguese secretary of state Assistant and of Finance Ricardo Mourinho Félix has authorized the holding company Parparticipadas to once again try to sell the financial institution, after, last April, it failed to sell the bank to Pivot, held by Aethel Partners and Miguel Relvas.

The Portuguese newspaper Jornal Económico states that the CEO of Parvalorem confirmed that the process has been resumed. “This week, Parparticipadas was instructed to prepare and launch the sale of the Bank Efisa. Parparticipadas is already preparing the sale process“, Bruno Castro Henriques stated.

The Portuguese State wanted to sell Efisa to Pivot, but the process depended on the European Central Bank’s approval. The due date for the sale arrived and the ECB hadn’t spoken on the issue, so the sale ended up failing. In April, the Portuguese Securities Markets Commission (CMVM) explained that “the forfeiture of the contract resulted from the end of the deadline predicted in the contract for the verification of ECB’s agreement with the transaction”.

Pivot — held by Ricardo Santos Silva and Aba Schubert, with Miguel Relvas, former Portuguese minister of Parliamentary Affairs, as a shareholder — would pay around 38 million euros to the public entity for the former investment bank BPN. The company also has Aethel as one of its shareholders, who presented the Portuguese Government a letter of intentions to purchase Novo Banco.