BPI says ECB keeps up pressure for it to exit Angolan bank BFA
"The pressure from the European supervisor to reduce our position has not decreased," João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, the chief executive of bank BPI, explained this Tuesday.
The chief executive of bank BPI said on Tuesday that pressure from the European Central Bank (ECB) for the bank to exit Angola’s BFA has not decreased, but that there is no news on the matter.
“The pressure from the European supervisor to reduce our position has not decreased,” João Pedro Oliveira e Costa said in Lisbon at the press conference to present the results for the first nine months of the year.
He added that, despite BPI’s stake in Banco de Fomento de Angola (BFA) remaining unchanged (48.1%), the bank has “done a lot of homework” concerning BFA, such as the significant distribution of dividends in the second quarter with a reduction in the proportion of BFA assets in BPI.
“We continue to do our homework, but we do not have concrete information. We expect to continue to benefit from the good management of BFA and the contributions to the bank’s results,” he said.
BPI has held 48.1% of BFA’s capital since the beginning of 2017, when it sold 2% of the Angolan bank to telecom operator Unitel (then controlled by Isabel dos Santos) as imposed by the ECB, as it considered that Angolan supervision was not equivalent to European supervision.
Since then, Frankfurt has maintained its recommendation for BPI to reduce its exposure to Angola.
BPI is 100% owned by the Spanish group CaixaBank.
Today, the bank reported profits of €242 million until September, almost three times the €86 million in the same period of 2020.
BPI said that BFA’s contribution to profits was €100 million, which included €40 million from the 2020 dividend and €50 million from the distribution of reserves recognised in results.
