[2019-09-26] Portuguese President enacts sale of a stake in a Cabo Verde bank

Source: Macauhub

The President of the Republic of Portugal on Monday enacted the bill for the sale of Cabo Verde’s Banco Comercial do Atlântico (BCA), held by Portuguese state financial group Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), according to an official announcement.

The official statement released on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic said that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had signed the Government bill despite having doubts “about the understanding that it will not weaken Portugal’s financial presence in Cabo Verde.”

CGD Group Chief Executive Paulo Macedo during a trip to Praia in December 2018 informed the Government of Cabo Verde that the interest in Banco Comercial do Atlântico would be sold and that Banco Interatlântico, in which it has a 70% stake.

Macedo justified the decision taken with the need to rationalise the presence of CGD group in the banking institutions of the archipelago, having rejected the possibility of merging the two banks, a solution that would lead to the possible dismissal of workers.

“Our understanding is that the BCA is a thriving bank, focused on the general Cape Verdean economy. It is a more inward-looking bank, while Banco Interatlântico is a bank for companies that we want to be increasingly outwardly facing,” said Macedo after meeting Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva.

Banco Interatlântico’s main shareholders are the CGD group with 70% and public limited companies Empreitel Figueiredo with 11.11%, Sita with 5.45% and Adega with 6.43%.

The Portuguese Ministry of Finance announced on July 2018 that CGD would have to reduce its presence in Cabo Verde and Mozambique by the end of 2020, under the review authorised by the institution’s 2017/2020 Strategic Plan.