Creditors Accuse Portugal Of “Unfair, Populist Short-Cut” In €2 Billion Bank Bail-In
Two weeks ago, The Bank of Portugal shocked markets by bailing in senior Novo Banco bondholders.
Novo Banco was the “good” bank forged from the ashes of Banco Espirito Santo which had to be bailed out by the state in August of 2014. The idea was to sell Novo Banco to pay for the cost of the bailout, but the auction process eventually floundered amid turmoil in Chinese markets (at least two of the potential bidders were Chinese) and uncertainty about whether this “good” bank would in fact need more capital given the elevated level of NPLs already on its books.
In November, the ECB told Novo it woudl indeed need to raise some €1.4 billion in fresh capital which the bank initially said would come from asset sales. A little over a month later, Portugal’s central bank essentially just gave up. On December 29, the bank announced it was transferring €2 billion in NB senior notes back to Banco Espirito Santo which, like a ghost skyscraper in China, is set for demolition.
In other words, Novo Banco plugged the €1.4 billion hole by essentially declaring €2 billion in bonds null and void.
There were five issues affected but you can get a pretty good idea about what happened next by having a look at how the 2017s traded that morning:
The reason this had to be done quickly was because if Portugal had waited until January, uninsured depositors would have been at risk under the EU’s new bank resolution mechanism. Plus, Portugal is anxious to get the auction process started again to avoid the decidedly unappealing prospect of having to keep the cost of the bailout on Lisbon’s books in perpetuity thus inflating the fiscal deficit by an extra 3% of GDP.
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