Portugal’s Banco BPI offers up Angola stake to ease Caixabank bid

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Portugal’s Banco BPI offers up Angola stake to ease Caixabank bid

6:01 CAT | 22 Sep 2016

Banco BPI has proposed selling a 2 percent stake in its Angolan unit in a last-ditch bid to secure a takeover by Spain’s Caixabank, which has been blocked by Isabel dos Santos, who has a stake of about 20 percent in the Portuguese bank.

BPI’s board proposed the sale of the stake to Angolan mobile operator Unitel, which is indirectly controlled by dos Santos, in exchange for Luanda’s support in a BPI shareholder vote to lift a voting rights cap which is scheduled for Wednesday.

This limit has so far allowed dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s president, to fend off Caixabank’s bid to control Portugal’s third-largest lender.

The Spanish bank has said it could withdraw the bid for BPI, which has a value of 1.59 billion euros, if the voting cap is not lifted. Caixabank already owns 45 percent of BPI.

BPI, which has long been trying to offload its risky Angolan assets to meet European Union regulations, said in a statement late on Tuesday that the proposal sent to Unitel envisages the sale of a 2 percent stake in BFA for 28 million euros ($31.2 million), giving Angola’s Unitel a 51 percent total stake.

The Portuguese bank would end up with a minority stake and therefore cease to consolidate BFA on its books, which will help it to meet the EU rules.

“The condition of this offer is that the following is observed: BPI statutes will no longer contain voting rights limits,” the board said.

Portuguese shareholder Violas Ferreira, who holds a 2.7 percent stake in BPI and has filed injunctions blocking previous votes to lift the limit, told Jornal de Negocios newspaper on Monday he could no longer oppose the takeover bid by Caixabank.

Portugal’s CMVM market regulator suspended trading in BPI shares ahead of the vote on Wednesday. It last closed at 1.091 euros on Tuesday, below the Caixabank offer price of 1.113 euros a share.

Source: Reuters