Greece: the mysterious “112” that costed 770M€ to Portuguese banks

There are many kinds of debtors in the Portuguese banking system, but Greece is, without a doubt, the largest. It is the so-called “client 112” according to the recently published Banco de Portugal debtors’ list. Greece drove the BCP and BPI to lose 766M€, after one of the biggest debt write-offs in history granted in the aftermath of the country’s second financial bailout in 2012.

This Tuesday, the Bank of Portugal published the list of all the major debtors to the Portuguese banks, which have asked for State support to solve their financial problems. The Central Bank did not reveal names, but it did, however, reveal numbers and the losses they provoked. Nonetheless, it was possible to reveal some identities by crossing the available data.

That was the case of the “client 112”, which was ironically the cause for BPI and BCP requesting state assistance of 1.5000M€ and 3.000M€, respectively.

According to the information released, client 112 caused a loss of 408M€ to BPI, corresponding to 80% of the bank’s total losses. The Bank of Portugal revealed that BPI’s exposure to 112 was initially even higher (480M€). But BPI was not the only one as BCP lost 358M€ with Greece’s public debt, corresponding to 30% of the bank’s total losses at the time.