Banks BCP, BEI support Portuguese businesses with €840 million
In a joint statement, the two banks said they had "renewed their long-standing partnership by signing an agreement to support SMEs, mid-caps and large companies in Portugal.
Millennium BCP and the European Investment Bank (EIB) will support Portuguese SMEs and medium and large capitalisation companies in recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with €840 million, they announced On Wednesday.
In a joint statement, the two institutions said they had “renewed their long-standing partnership by signing an agreement to support SMEs, mid-caps (up to 3,000 people) and large companies (over 3,000 people) in Portugal.
The document explains that the EIB will provide a €200 million guarantee to Millennium BCP, allowing the bank to “provide working capital, leasing and investment loans” totalling €400 million.
With these operations, EIB and Millennium expect to “mobilise funding of up to €840 million in support of Portuguese companies affected by the economic consequences generated by the pandemic”.
This agreement is supported by the European Guarantee Fund, which is part of the European Union’s €540 billion package of measures to respond to the economic impact of Covid-19.
“With this support, Millennium BCP will be able to finance debt on more favourable terms, ensuring that Portuguese companies have sufficient funding to mitigate the economic impacts of Covid-19, allowing them to ensure their medium and long-term growth and development plans,” the document said.
The EIB’s director for lending operations in Portugal and Spain, Birthe Bruhn-Léon, said that facilitating access to funding for small, medium and large companies is “essential to strengthen the economic recovery of the European Union.
The chairman of Millennium BCP, Miguel Maya, said that the bank had been a “reference in supporting the business sector”.
“We played a central role in supporting the economy during the pandemic and at the beginning of the economic recovery. In the last two years, Millennium BCP provided financing of around six billion euros to more than 40,000 companies,” he said, pointing out that with this agreement, the bank will serve “in a distinctive way the customers in the transformation that companies are making to strengthen digital skills and the robustness of their operations and business models in the face of climate change.”
