During the “Grand Meeting of the Bank of the Future” conference held today in Lisbon, Francisco Cary, vice-president of the Executive Board of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), remarked that “these sales processes are always very lengthy.”
“We should receive indicative proposals between now and the beginning of 2026,” he stated, noting that based on the “credibility of the bidders” and the “quality of the proposals,” CGD will carry out its evaluation to decide on the sale.
Additionally, regulatory authorization will be necessary, and previous experience in Brazil indicates that this “takes about a year.”
If the sale is agreed upon in 2026, completion is unlikely “before mid-2027,” anticipated the vice-president of CGD, from the executive team led by Paulo Macedo.
In early September, the government passed a resolution in the Council of Ministers to relaunch the sale of all capital that CGD holds in the Brazilian institution, with a total or partial sale of the companies that the Brazilian bank controls.
At today’s conference, Francisco Cary recalled that the sale of the bank was part of the group’s plan from the 2017 to 2020 cycle when the Portuguese banking group decided to divest from a set of international activities with which it does not have sufficient “affinity” or “critical mass and relevance” to justify market presence.
At the time, CGD could not sell the institution based on the proposals received, and as it was not a “desperate” seller, it concluded that the conditions were not met to carry out the transaction, he said.
Now, “the reasons” that led CGD “to want to sell the bank are still present,” he asserted.
“Of course, Brazil, from a cultural affinity standpoint, is significant, but the economic affinity is not that relevant,” he justified, indicating that CGD’s presence in the market is marginal.
On July 30, during CGD’s results presentation in Lisbon, the bank’s CEO, Paulo Macedo, noted that the group once again “has interested entities” in Banco Caixa Geral.
