BANK || Vítor Bento, the current president of SIBS, the company that manages the ATM (Multibanco) machines in Portugal, has been officially proposed as the new chairman of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) replacing the current chairman Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado.
The Espírito Santo Financial group, which holds 25% of the bank’s shares, made it official in a statement forwarded to the Portuguese financial regulation watchdog CMVM, which also includes the appointment of João Moreira Rato, the head of the IGCP debt agency, as BES’ new financial administrator.
The bank’s current financial administrator Amílcar Morais Pires was the first to be suggested to take over as the new executive chairman, but it is said that the Bank of Portugal insisted BES be placed under new independent management with no ties to the Espírito Santo family.
Salgado, the executive chairman of BES since 1991 and also the great-grandson of the bank’s founder, will remain as chairman until the bank’s shareholders agree upon who will take over as president during a meeting on July 31.
BES has been facing difficult times in these past months due to family tensions over who should succeed Ricardo Salgado as chairman and “irregularities” found in an audit to BES’ accounts, including “omissions in the accounting of liabilities” and “overvaluations of assets”.
