BPN ex-directors bagged millions in compensation
Parvalorem, the Portuguese State-owned company that inherited the toxic assets and employees from the failed Banco Português de Negócios (BPN), has paid out between €200-€350 million in compensation to the 10 former directors of the bank nationalised in 2008.
These financial payouts, reports Correio da Manhã, that have resulted from amicable redundancy packages from 2021.
Parvalorem’s task as been to maximise the recovery of BPN assets, paying off former directors under contractual obligations to reduce expenses and enhance resources.
Of the 10 BPN directors with high payoffs, one who was an ex-CEO of BPN as well as a director in Parvalorem, received a €400,000 payoff, while the others received between €200,000 and €350,000.
All of the former BPN directors in question have, according to Parvalorem, “salaries and seniorities” in both BPN and Parvalorem which was tasked with clawing back as many assets as possible from the bank.
Parvalorem S.A. was charged with the reprivatisation of BPN and the recovery of assets after its acquisition of Grupo BPN.
The Banco Português de Negócios (English: Portuguese Bank of Business), or simply BPN used to be a private bank, but was nationalised by the Portuguese Government in 2008 after a string of bad management resulted in malpractice-related debt of €1.8Bn euros. Police and accounting investigations subsequently revealed several irregularities at the institution. In 2012, BPN, stripped of many of its debts and bad loans, was sold to Angola’s Banco BIC for €40 million.