Friday, May 6, 2011

Portugal Banks Don't Foresee Tapping Bailout Money

(PortugalTwitter)-LISBON, May 6 (Reuters) - With no clear winner emerging in opinion polls a month before Portugal's general election, the implementation of a EU/IMF bailout deal hinges on the debt-ridden nation's ability to field a broad coalition government, analysts say.

We expect to raise our ratio through our shareholders, markets and portfolio sales," Banco Comercial Portugues SA (BCP.LB) President Carlos Santos Ferreira said in a televised event, adding that fire sales won't happen.

Nonetheless, analysts agree that the sector’s capital shortfall is far less than €12bn ($17.5bn), with the big six banks between them requiring somewhere between €3bn and €4bn.

One explanation for the difference is that the €12bn also factors in the costs of Portugal’s banks adapting to new Basel III international capital standards, to be phased in from 2013.

In the short term, the implementation of the bailout deal doesn't seem to be in jeopardy regardless of the results of the election," said Elisio Estanque, a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra.

Rasmus Rüffer, head of the ECB delegation, said the package was aimed at bringing about a balanced deleveraging of the banking system so that it could return to “a market-based funding position”.

Mr Thomsen said on Thursday that the €35bn mechanism to facilitate government-guaranteed bond issuance by the banks was no different from that used in other bail-outs. Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president, said the bank had “absolutely no new concept and no new ‘window’

Eurasia Group analyst Antonio Barroso wrote in a research note that a coalition government including the Socialists "is the most probable outcome ...given the compelling political logic of sharing the responsibility for the reforms".

This would be good for the initial implementation of the package but negative in the long term because coalition governments in Portugal tend to be short-lived," he added.

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