With banks in Portugal shedding staff at an exponential rate, the good news for the sector is that six of the country’s leading institutions have recorded joint profits of almost €542 million in the first nine months of this year.
The ‘recovery’ from last year’s losses of €194 million over the same period in 2014 pans out at an average gain of €61 million per month per bank.
But looked at more closely, BCP Millennium is the leader, registering gains of €264.5 million – a huge leap forwards from the losses last year of €109.5 million – followed by Santander (€176.7 million), BPI (€151 million), Banif (€6.2 million) and State bank CGD (€3.4 million).
Montepio is the only bank registering a loss so far this year (-59.9 million) against overall gains last year of €19.5 million.
But before anyone lets off any fireworks, it has to be remembered that just three of the banks (BPI, BCP and CGD) have fired 972 staff recently, while CGD is still due to drop another 400.
Yesterday, Spanish group BBVA announced it would be cutting another 187 jobs in the final phase of its restructuring programme (http://portugalresident.com/bbva-to-close-26-more-branches-and-slash-187-jobs).
