Spain’s Caixabank to launch full takeover offer for Banco BPI

MADRID / REUTERS

Spain’s Caixabank said on Monday it would launch a full takeover bid for the 56 percent of Portuguese lender Banco BPI that it does not already own for 1.113 euros ($1.26) per share.
The offer was dependent on acceptance topping 50 percent and the Portuguese bank eliminating a 20 percent shareholder rights limitation, the Spanish bank said in a statement to the stock market regulator.
The announcement comes after Spanish lender and Angolan investor Isabel dos Santos, who owns 18.6 percent of BPI, said on Sunday that they had failed to reach an agreement on its sale.
Caixabank and dos Santos are BPI’s two largest shareholders and the Spanish bank has been trying to buy her out and gain full control of BPI for at least a year.
Trading in BPI has been suspended since April 8, when it closed at 1.191 euros per share.
“This is a logical step in Caixabank’s international expansion given its knowledge of BPI and the Portuguese banking sector, where the bank has been active since 1995,” Caixabank said.
Caixabank expects the acquisition, which it hopes to close by the end of the third quarter, to hit fully-loaded core capital by between 97 and 146 basis points, depending on acceptance.
A potential sale of the costly Angolan business could help reduce the acquisition’s impact on Caixabank’s core capital, it said.
The Spanish bank said it saw annual cost synergies from the deal of around 85 million euros by the third year and revenue synergies of 35 million euros per year. It estimated restructuring costs of around 250 million euros.
CaixaBank is a Spanish financial services company owned by the Catalan savings bank La Caixa with a 72.76 percent stake. Headquartered in Barcelona, the company consists of the universal banking and insurance activities of the La Caixa group, along with the group’s stakes in the oil and gas firm Repsol YPF, the telecommunications company Telefónica and its holdings in several other financial institutions.
It is Spain’s third-largest lender by market value and with 6,631 branches to serve its 13.2 million customers, CaixaBank has the most extensive branch network in the Spanish market.