LISBON: A key shareholder vote to lift a 20% voting-rights cap at Portuguese lender Banco BPI SA—a precondition to a takeover offer by Spain’s CaixaBank SA—was again postponed on Tuesday, raising further uncertainty over the bank’s future. Following a short shareholder meeting that started at 0900 GMT, BPI issued a statement saying the voting had been rescheduled for Sept. 21.
A CaixaBank spokesman said the Spanish bank had sought and received support from a majority of BPI shareholders to postpone the vote for 15 days in order to provide enough time to receive a decision from a Portuguese judge on an investor’s temporary court order.
A previous voting attempt on July 22 was moved to Tuesday after that investor, Violas Ferreira Financial SA, which owns 2.7% of BPI, disclosed that it had a temporary court order forbidding the vote to take place. Violas Ferreira had balked at CaixaBank’s offer, which it considered too low. Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, who owns 18.6% of BPI, was also against the takeover.
CaixaBank, Spain’s third-largest lender by market value, owns 45% of BPI and has offered shareholders €1.113 ($1.243) a share for the rest of the bank, valuing it at €1.62 billion. Shares of BPI, Portugal’s largest lender by market value, fell 0.8% to €1.076 following the announcement.
The voting-rights cap limits CaixaBank’s voting power in BPI to almost the equivalent of Ms. dos Santos. The two stakeholders are involved in a lengthy battle over the future of BPI and its Angolan unit after a 2014 European Union ruling placed Portugal’s former colony among countries whose debt is riskier than that of its own members.
As a result, BPI’s exposure to Angola’s debt rose beyond a limit imposed by the European Central Bank, which has told the lender to either raise a very high amount of capital or shed the unit. If successful in its bid, CaixaBank will have sole control of the unit’s fate. Uncertainty over BPI’s future comes as Portugal struggles with a series of banking issues. The government recently announced a €5.1 billion recapitalization plan for state-owned Caixa Geral de Depositos SA, which should increase the country’s already high debt load.
The central bank, meanwhile, is trying—for a second time—to sell Novo Banco SA, the “good bank” resulted from the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo SA in 2014. The sale price is expected to be nowhere near the €4.9 billion injected into the lender by the state and domestic banks.
