BCP offer for BPI

Who benefits from the proposed takeover BCP has made for BPI?

For individual customers, acquisition of an aggressive, customer-oriented bank by a less-competitive institution is hardly positive. The consolidation of the customer bases of the two banks is never a simple addition - there are customers who have accounts at both, and BPI customers who do not want to be part of BCP.

For staff, there is the prospect of mass redundancies. The synergies from the takeover inevitably mean that fewer staff will be required in back-office operations and there will be branch closures, just as we saw with the BCP / Nova Rede / Banco Mello / BPA consolidation.

For corporate customers working with both banks, after consolidation their credit lines will almost certainly be merged, not added together.

So who stands to win - only the faceless shareholders, fund managers and the like who, even at their peak of intervention in corporate affairs in other countries, only focus on management salaries (BCP watch out!).

Let's hope that the core BPI shareholders decide to hang on to their independence until a suitor appears who doesn't simply want to eliminate domestic competition.