The Portuguese government agreed to buy David Neeleman’s indirect stake in TAP SGPS SA as part of a plan to provide a rescue loan to save the airline, Bloomberg News reported. “This allows us to unblock the loan and avoid the bankruptcy of a company that’s essential for the country,” Finance Minister Joao Leao said at a press conference in Lisbon on Thursday night. Like other carriers, TAP had to halt most of its operations due to the coronavirus outbreak.
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A-ETPL, Associação - Port Work Company of Lisbon announced that it had been notified of the decision to declare its insolvency and the appointment of the insolvency administrator, The Portugal News reported. In a statement, A-ETPL states that the sentence handed down by the Lisbon Judicial Court of Justice Lisbon Commercial Court - Judge 7 set a deadline of 30 days for claiming credits.
Debt-burdened telecom carrier Altice Europe is gearing up to sell a stake in its high-speed fiber network business in Portugal, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, with an auction process expected to kick off within a fortnight, Reuters reported. Altice, which took control of Portugal Telecom in 2015, is looking to replicate its recent sale of a 49.99 percent stake in French fiber optic business SFR FTTH to three investment funds for 1.8 billion euros. The group, whose founder is billionaire Patrick Drahi, has hired Lazard to sound out potential bidders including U.S.
A Portuguese court approved on Friday a debt restructuring plan that was passed by creditors in major Brazilian telecom firm Oi SA, marking a step forward in the company’s tortured bankruptcy recovery process, Reuters reported. With the court’s approval, seen by Reuters, bankruptcy courts in all relevant jurisdictions - Brazil, the United States, the Netherlands, and now Portugal - have signed off on the recovery plan, which was approved by creditors in December.
One of Portugal’s wealthiest people, Paula Amorim, and Vangard Properties have presented a joint bid for part of the oceanside Comporta estate, the country’s largest privately-owned property. Comporta was the Espirito Santo family’s largest real estate holding. It is now held by liquidators following the 2014 collapse of the family business and the bank founded by them, Banco Espirito Santo, Reuters reported. The property, which stretches over a 1,300 hectare area of coastline south of the city of Setubal, includes plots for villas, golf courses and comes with licenses to construct hotels.
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Ramón Rivera had barely gotten his olive oil business started in the sun-swept Alentejo region of Portugal when Europe’s debt crisis struck. The economy crumbled, wages were cut, and unemployment doubled, the International New York Times reported. The government in Lisbon had to accept a humiliating international bailout. But as the misery deepened, Portugal took a daring stand: In 2015, it cast aside the harshest austerity measures its European creditors had imposed, igniting a virtuous cycle that put its economy back on a path to growth.
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Novo Banco is facing a fresh challenge from a London hedge fund that says the bank has unwittingly defaulted on certain bonds, further complicating a crucial debt sale the Portuguese lender is looking to complete this week, the Financial Times reported. Novo Banco, the lender created out of the failure of Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo (BES) in 2014, is already the subject of long-running litigation from international investors including BlackRock and Pimco, who lost money due to a controversial debt transfer at the end of 2015.
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Non-performing loans held by Portuguese banks are declining at a substantial rate as the economy expands but remain “very high” by European standards, Moody’s said on Wednesday. The rating agency said the ratio of NPLs to gross lending fell to 15.2 per cent at the end of 2017, down from 19.5 per cent a year earlier, the Financial Times reported. The ratio had peaked at 20.1 per cent in 2016 in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis, which forced Portugal to seek an international bailout.
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Weaker growth in the eurozone would “significantly affect Portugal”, the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday, saying “lingering domestic vulnerabilities” would amplify any external shock to the former bailout country’s economic recovery, the Financial Times reported. The caution came as fallout from the Italian political crisis pushed Portugal’s 10-year debt yield up 12 basis points on Tuesday. Lisbon’s PSI 20 stock market index fell 2.4 per cent. Within this, shares in Millennium BCP, the country’s largest listed bank, shed more than 7 per cent.
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Portuguese lender Novo Banco has reported a net loss of €1.4bn, underlining how southern European banks are still struggling to repair their balance sheets after its new US private equity owners booked big provisions on bad loans, the Financial Times reported. The beleaguered bank, born out of the wreckage of Banco Espírito Santo and taken over by Lone Star of the US last year, said it would draw €792m of previously committed funding from a resolution fund owned by Portugal’s other banks.
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