Financial statements reveal that the liabilities of the entity commonly referred to as ‘bad’ BES were 11.06 billion euros in 2024, up from the 10.7 billion euros recorded in 2023. Meanwhile, assets amounted to 179.9 million euros, an increase from the 174.7 million euros reported the previous year.
In 2023, BES reported a loss of 3.058 billion euros following a court decision to recognize a 2.7 billion euro debt owed to credits from the Resolution Fund.
As with the previous year, the Liquidation Committee stated in the released accounts that, following the judicial decision, “the assets of BES are insufficient to pay the credits of the Resolution Fund,” and thus, “there will be no payments to other classes” of creditors, including both common and subordinated credits.
The Liquidation Committee emphasizes the legal principle that no creditor should incur greater losses in a resolution than they would in a liquidation (‘no creditor worse off’).
Consultancy firm Deloitte calculated that if the bank had been liquidated, common creditors would have recovered 31.7%, a sum that must be paid to them by the banking Resolution Fund. However, there is uncertainty regarding the timing of this payment, which may only occur at the end of BES’s liquidation process, a procedure that could span several years.
In 2019, BES’s Liquidation Committee recognized nearly 5,000 creditors, both common and subordinated, with claims totaling 5.057 billion euros.
Creditors who were not recognized or disagreed with the recognized credits challenged the decision. According to the 2024 annual report, by the end of the previous year, 1,946 challenges had been resolved, while 1,644 claims remained pending in the courts.
Banco Espírito Santo (BES) faced a resolution measure in the summer of 2014, after which its banking license was revoked, leading to its liquidation. Portions of its assets and liabilities were transferred to Novo Banco, while BES was managed by a Liquidation Committee, currently headed by César Brito, responsible for managing the remaining assets, credits, and legal proceedings.
