Portugal Bank to Half Foreign Assets

Portugal’s largest bank, the state-owned Caixa Geral de Depositos, plans to slash its foreign assets by half by 2020 as part of an ongoing restructuring and will prioritize selling its Spanish and South African businesses, the lender said, CNBC reported. In a statement issued late on Friday, the bank, which posted a record 2016 loss of €1.86 billion ($1.99 billion), said it expects to cut its international assets to no more than €12 billion by 2020 from 23 billion last year, while targeting a rise in return on equity from the operations to more than 15% from 13%. CGD’s total net assets at the end of last year stood at €93.5 billion, down from some 101 billion in 2015. The lender said it planned to maintain operations “in markets with Portuguese affinity,” which include Portuguese-speaking Angola, Mozambique and the Macau region in China, while selling or shutting down the remaining non-core international business.