BCP reinforces its bet on Portuguese debt. It purchased one billion in three months
By the end of March, the bank headed by Nuno Amado had a portfolio of 4.696 million euros in Portuguese sovereign debt securities. It increased its exposure in 29% since the end of 2017.
BCP started out this year by reinforcing its bet on the Portuguese public debt. The bank headed by Nuno Amado increased its exposure to Portuguese sovereign debt securities in over one billion euros in the first quarter of 2018, in comparison to the previous one.
The bank’s results for the first quarter of 2018, disclosed this Monday, show that in the end of March, BCP held 4,969 million euros in Portuguese sovereign debt securities. This amount represents a 1,060 million increase (29%), when compared to the 3,696 million it held in its portfolio by the end of December.
Reinforcing BCP’s bet on the Portuguese sovereign debt takes place as markets recover confidence in Portugal, especially after rating agencies also improved its assessment of the Portuguese grade.
“The good macroeconomic performance, the partial reversal of the global uptrend of interest rates and the maintenance of an extremely accommodative stance for the ECB’s monetary policy contributed to keep the yields of the Portuguese public debt and the spread against their better rated European counterparts close to the post-financial crisis lows”, BCP further states in its report.
The increase of the bank’s bet on Portuguese sovereign debt was a result of the investment in Treasury bonds, while BCP reduced its exposure to Treasury bills (to 499 million). The bank ended the first quarter of the year with 4,197 million euros in Treasury bonds — 38% more in comparison to the 3,051 million it held in the end of December.
Nonetheless, BCP also reinforced its exposure to the Polish public debt, with a total ascending to 3,981 million — a 821 million euros’ increase. In addition, it had invested 600 million euros in Mozambican debt and 900 million in the North American public debt.
The bank ended the first quarter of 2018 with 10.3 billion euros applied in public debt securities, which corresponds to a 31% increase in comparison to the end of 2017. From that total, less than one quarter (3.1 billion euros) concerned securities maturing in one year. The same is to say that the majority of those securities concern long-term debt.
