New Bank. Consensus to nationalize – ]

What all have in common, José Maria Ricciardi and Francisco Louçã? Manuela Ferreira Leite, and Mariana Mortagua? Paulo Rangel and Jerónimo de Sousa? Luís Nobre Guedes and Catarina Martins? They all believe that this time to nationalize the New Bank may be the best solution.

The strange consensus regime that seems to be forming around a nationalization – even temporary – of the New Bank has no explanation in the proposals that are on the table. Both of the Lone Star (considered the best by the Bank of Portugal) as the Apollo/Centerbridge imply the provision of guarantees by the State that, in practice, this means that you will have costs for taxpayers.

in addition, the funds that have submitted proposals for purchase are well-known for purchasing companies and banks in difficulties for the dismantle and sell quickly at the best price. The features that make fear for the worst at a time when the banking national is increasingly under foreign control.

all in All, there are more and more voices on the right who join the claim of the left to keep the bank in the public sphere – although outside of the GBD – to recapitalise and later sell it.

“The New Bank may not be healthy, but is recovering. Should not be sold cheaply”, warns this week the Financial Times, noting that the State must take account of the approximately five billion euros already injected into the bank to evaluate proposals such as that of Lone Star which offers more than 750 million and still requires warranties to the State.

“A bank is not a building. It is a structure, a project, an intervention in the economy. This institution [the Lone Star] does not give us any assurance, I think, that this project is to go ahead,” he cautioned Manuela Ferreira Leite, who sees in the nationalization temporary a solution as possible.

“Not if you can admit, all in all, the New Bank to be quartered, to be separated in portions to later be disposed of”, argues Pedro Santana Lopes in an opinion article in the Business Journal in which he never speaks directly in the nationalization, but ends up by concluding that the sale in these terms may be the worst solution. “In this framework it is best not to be a sale than have a sale any,” writes Santana Lopes, in the same line of reasoning followed by Paulo Rangel and Luis Nobre Guedes to admit that the proposals on the table advises that the State retains for ever the property of the bank to be divested only when the conditions are more favorable.

“I think that it is better to the bank to be nationalised”, he also advocated José Maria Ricciardi (former administrator of the BES), remembering that this is a “one of the major banks to finance small and medium-sized enterprises”. Ricciardi is considered that the intent of these funds “is to sell the bank to bits” and that this is a scenario that will not benefit the Portuguese financial system.

The arguments of Francisco Louçã about the nature of the funds buyers are similar to those used by Ricciardi. But Louçã is the one who goes so far as to set up a plan for the New Bank that pass by “to make the accounts with accuracy”, divested operations and non-bank and do a bank “over time”.

One thing is certain: the nationalization of the New Bank ceased to be a taboo political. For now, it is among the possibilities that are being studied by the Government, which maintains, however, that negotiations for their sale.