After completion of the internal group operation “Banco Popular Portugal ceases to exist as a legal entity with all its rights and obligations transferred to Banco Santander Totta,” the latter said in the statement sent to Portugal’s securities markets authority, the CMVM.
In a separate news release, the bank explained that “Popular Portugal branches will adopt the brand Santander Totta” and that its employees will also now be employed by the latter.
The release quotes Santander Totta’s CEO, António Vieira Monteiro, as saying that the operation strengthens his bank.
“The integration of Popular Portugal [into Santander Totta] is a great opportunity, because we want to continue growing in an efficient and sustainable way,” he said. “Together we are stronger.
“From today, we become Portugal’s biggest private bank in terms of assets and loans in the domestic market,” he concluded.
In its statement to the CMVM; Santander Totta also said that it had completed the acquisition of Primestar Servicing, the Banco Popular unit specialising in loan recovery and management of property assets, and of the information technology activities of units, Ingenieria and Produban.
It also expects, it said, that in the “first few days of January” it will complete the acquisition of insurance unit Eurovida and the “taking of indirect control of Popular Seguros”. It noted that it had already received the necessary authorisations from Portugal’s insurance and pension fund supervisors.
On 6 June, the European Central Bank decreed that Spain’s Banco Popular was not viable and decided to wind it up. Santander then agreed to buy Popular for the symbolic price of €1.
To facilitate the purchase, Santander undertook a capital increase of €7 billion, in order to guarantee the capital and provisions necessary for Banco Popular to operate normally.
The operation had an impact in Portugal, where Banco Popular had a unit, Banco Popular Portugal.
Initially Santander also acquired Banco Popular Portugal, but then indicated that it would sell it and fold it into Santander Totta, along with its 1,000 employees, as part of an internal group operation. Since then it had been awaiting authorisation from regulators and supervisors, including the ECB.