Novo Banco with three other big default names

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Novo Banco closed 2018 with 36 big ticket debtors who defaulted on their loans — three more than admitted last year.

All of these big debtors have saddled the bank led by António Ramalho with a loss of €4.1Bn.
It means that according to figures from the Bank of Portugal, Novo Banco is owed the most money from credit default of the main Portuguese banks, followed by BCP with €2Bn, BPN with €1.8Bn, CGD with €1.6Bn and BPI with €508 million.
The now defunct banks BES, an entity holding toxic assets still trying to be recovered, has €1Bn of bad debts on its books. Banif, from which the banking sector regulator CMVM has received 1,002 complaints from those claiming they were financially prejudiced and which was wound up in 2015, is still owed €145 million.
Concerning Novo Banco, the number of debtors was updated on Tuesday by the Bank of Portugal which it was obliged to do after the ratification of a law in parliament which ordered that the amounts of all debtors owing over a certain amount should be made public in cases where banks had applied for capitalisation via a public or government fund.
Such was the case with Novo Banco, that because of losses in 2018 had ro apply for financial compensation from the Resolution Fund on the back of the Contingent Capital Mechanism set up to provide liquidity to banks which otherwise would have collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis.
The four economic groups which are now included on the list of big defaulters have been given the codes ‘131’, ‘132’, ‘133’ and ‘134’. The names of these clients have not been revealed despite pressure from some political parties to do so.
However, in a statement to the online news wire ECO, Novo Banco CEO António Ramalho said the bank had succeeded in recovering €271 million in the second half of 2018 while promising that from henceforth the bank would be an “example” of a financial institution that could reduce the number of its big debtors.