Spanish bank Bankinter has bought Barclays retail banking business in Portugal for €100 million. It is a deal which represents losses for Barclays of “around €272 million” as it absorbs 84 branches, 1000 staff and takes on 185,000 clients.
The purchase is Bankinter’s second international transaction in its history, reports Wall Street Journal, describing Spain’s No 7 bank by market value a “small Spanish bank” that is looking abroad to “counterbalance sluggish loan demand at home while battling rock-bottom interest rates”.
What the deal actually means for Portugal is yet to be confirmed. A press conference to outline Bankinter’s plans is due to come in Lisbon on Monday.
For now, all that has been explained is the nuts-and-bolts of the sale which does not include Barclays’ Barclaycard operation, nor its investment- and corporate-banking units for multinationals.
According to Público, Barclays retail business here involves “letters of credit of €4.8 billion, €2.9 billion in assets managed in overseas accounts, a network of 84 high street banks, a team of 1,000 workers and 185,000 clients, of which 20,300 are businesses”.
The sale comes over a year after the vast British bank announced a European shake-up designed to shed what WSJ describes as its “less profitable units”.
