As the Bank of Portugal’s governor tries to gloss over his failure to sell Novo Banco by claiming that there are other, as yet un-named bidders* from Spain waiting to negotiate, news comes in that the various court actions against the bank now exceed €1.5 billion.
Portugal’s most miserly millionaire Américo Amorim is after €179.4 million, Oak Finance, the investment vehicle set up by Goldman Sachs, wants the return of €706 million, Petróleos de Venezuela would love to see its €81 million again and the 2,500 BES depositors that were duped into switching their savings into collapsing Grupo Espírito Santo companies demand the return of €527 million.
Some of the court petitions ask for the seizure of Novo Banco’s assets while others go a step further and want to see the annulment of the Bank of Portugal’s botched ‘resolution’ to BES’s collapse and the return of all the assets that were transferred to ‘good bank’ Novo Banco.
The Bank of Portugal is spending significant sums of our money on defending these cases, as is Novo Banco, with more cases piling up every week and keeping teams of expensive lawyers very busy indeed.
The Financial Times was less than impressed with Carlos Costa’s performance over the sale process for Novo Banco, ending up as he did with two Chinese companies that then made risible offers, and a US venture capital fund now in a line up of one.
Costa has suspended the sale process until after the European Central bank does its next stress test which will show that Novo Banco needs a pile more money which the bank will have to borrow from somewhere - either the Treasury of the banks that form the Resolution Fund.
The sale now is out of the immediate political arena as Novo Banco will not now be sold until after the general election on October 4th.
The FT reported today that those close to the sale process are of the opinion that talks were ‘badly managed.’
* Caixabank and Santander
