Sunday, April 17, 2016

Banks in colonies

Reuters --

Spain's Caixabank and Angolan investor Isabel dos Santos failed to reach an agreement on their shareholdings in Banco BPI, leaving the Portuguese bank with a costly exposure to the Angolan market, BPI said on Sunday. Caixabank and dos Santos, the daughter of Angola's president, said a week ago they had reached an agreement but the deal came undone after efforts to list BPI's Angolan banking unit BFA failed. BPI said dos Santos had failed to live up to the deal. 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. "After April 10, (dos Santos's holding company) Santoro Finance disrespected what had been agreed and made requests for changes to the contractual documents," BPI said in a statement. "As a consequence, BPI informs that the agreement announced on April is without effect."

If you can't trust the mysteriously wealthy daughter of a poverty-stricken petro-state strongman, who can you trust?

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