A letter the bank’s board sent to workers said that the temporary changes to wages had meant hundreds of jobs had been saved and those who left the company did so under better conditions.
Workers at BCP who earn more than €1,000 top line have had their wages cut by between 3 percent and 11 percent for the past three years as part of the restructuring package agreed with Brussels following the bailout, which also involved closing branches and laying off thousands of workers in a programme involving early retirement and mutual agreement dismissals.
Despite that, the bank’s restructuring is not finished yet.
In May, the bank announced it would close another 90 branches by2018, to have fewer than 570 in Portugal, but it did not disclose how many more workers it wanted to shed.
In related news, Bain Capital Credit said on Tuesday it has bought €476 million of non-performing and sub-performing loans (NPL) from Portuguese state-owned bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD).
Bain Capital said this purchase is the first the company has made in Portugal and the portfolio is composed mainly of bilateral real-estate loans taken out by small, medium and a few large companies.
The US company added that the collateral to guarantee the loans includes a huge range of assets such as residential development plans, some of which are in progress and others which have been completed, along with some land.
“We are very enthusiastic about our entry into the Portuguese NPL market”, said the Bain Capital Credit general director for Europe, Alon Avner.
“Following the acquisition of other similarly complex portfolios across Europe and the rest of the world, we believe this is the right time to expand into Portugal”, he added.