Paris, June 26, 2026 (Lusa) - The CEO of BPCE, the owner of Portugal's Novo Banco, said on Friday that no extraordinary dividend distribution is planned for this year, in relation to the 2025 dividends that were not paid out and remained with the bank.
“We do not foresee this,” said Nicolas Namias during a conversation with a group of Portuguese journalists visiting the headquarters of the French group BPCE in Paris.
“It is not a question of BPCE retaining the 2025 capital; we paid for that capital,” added Namias, explaining that the price paid for Novo Banco was €6.7 billion because it already included that amount – otherwise it would have been lower.
In the agreement for the sale of Novo Banco to the French group BPCE, it was agreed that the Lone Star investment fund and the Portuguese State (the Novo Banco shareholders who sold their stakes) would not receive the dividends relating to 2025 and that these would remain with Novo Banco, in other words, they would belong to the new shareholder (BPCE).
In 2025, Novo Banco posted record profits of €828 million, meaning that, under its dividend distribution policy, it could have paid out around €500 million.
At the general meeting in March, as part of the proposal for the allocation of profits, the resolution not to distribute dividends was approved, with the majority of the profit being carried forward (a small portion was retained in the statutory reserve, as required by law).
As the dividends remained with the bank, they became the property of the French group upon completion of the acquisition (in April), meaning it could make an extraordinary dividend payment, appropriating whatever amount it deemed appropriate.
According to Nicolas Namias, such a distribution is not planned and the objective for Novo Banco is to grow its business.
“The primary objective is to ensure that the bank has the capital to grow its activities,” he said.
Novo Banco was established in 2014 to take over part of Banco Espírito Santo’s (BES) banking operations when, in August of that year, BES was subject to a winding-up measure in light of the severe crisis in which it was embroiled.
In 2017, a majority stake in Novo Banco (75% of the shares) was sold to the US fund Lone Star, with the Portuguese State retaining 25% of the shares.
It was well known that Lone Star’s objective was to make the bank profitable quickly so as to sell it in the medium term at a profit, which happened at the end of April for €6.7 billion.
Lone Star received around €5 billion (in addition to past dividends), whilst the Portuguese State received €1,673 million (which, when added to dividends already received, enabled the public coffers to recoup around €2 billion previously injected into the bank).
According to calculations by Lusa, the BES resolution has so far cost the public coffers around €8 billion (mainly as a result of the initial capitalisation of Novo Banco and the recapitalisations carried out by the Resolution Fund).
Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE) is the second-largest banking group in France and the fourth-largest in the eurozone.
Before acquiring Novo Banco, it was already operating in Portugal in the areas of consumer credit and investment banking (it owns the Natixis technology centre in Porto, with around 2,500 employees), but the acquisition of Novo Banco marked its entry into retail banking in Portugal.
According to BPCE, the purchase of Novo Banco was the “largest cross-border banking acquisition in the eurozone in over ten years”.
IM/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
