European Commission gives green light for Novobanco sale to BPCE but case over €5Bn lost transfer continues

The European Commission approved the sale of Portugal’s Novobanco to the French banking group BPCE, the second largest banking group in France which will now be the sole shareholder of Portugal’s fourth largest bank.

“The European Commission has approved, under the European Union Merger Regulation, the acquisition of exclusive control of Novo Banco, Portugal, by BPCE, France. The transaction mainly concerns the Portuguese banking and financial sectors,” the community executive announced in a statement.

According to the institution, the “notified transaction does not raise competition concerns, given the limited combined market position of the companies resulting from the proposed transaction”, in a deal formalised in mid-2025 with a valuation of about €6.4 billion, referring to 100% of Novo Banco’s capital.

At the same time, and as a result of the sale the bank’s staff will get a bonus corresponding to two monthly salaries and will be paid out as soon as the sale in completed.

It is viewed as a kind of early Christmas present for Novobanco workers, who were always going to receive a bonus from the sale of the bank to BPCE. Novobanco’s CEO Mark Bourke has made a commitment to work with the shareholder to award a bonus corresponding to two salaries, as they had asked.

But it wasn’t all good news for Novobanco this week after the online news source ECO learned that FNBC Invest has presented proof to back top its demand from the bank of the staggering amount of €10Bn.

The demand is based around an alleged transfer via Deutsche Bank which Novobanco has refuted as an attempt at fraud.

FNBC Invest is an investment company based in Barcelos that is demanding €10Bn from the bank, presenting the so-called proof of the money transfer to a court – the proof allegedly shows the transfer of money to an account at Novobanco via Deutsche Bank.

But the document has several typos. For example, it contains a mistake in the name of the financial administrator of the German bank that supposedly authorised the operation in 2022. 

The name of James von Moltke, CFO of Deutsche Bank, appears repeatedly in the 16-page document with a slightly different surname: Molkte, with the letters ‘t’ and ‘k’ swapped.

A deeper analysis of the document also shows that there are more mistakes, including the official address of the German bank in Frankfurt (the address number and postal code are wrong) while in the title Chief Financial Officer, the Financial is typed with two ‘c’ instead of one.

The document — which also includes an approval from the Bundesbank for the transfer of funds to Portugal signed by an official named Gunter M. Dunkel — will be one of several through which FNBC seeks to prove that the company Immobilien Partner GMBH transferred €5Bn on 23 March 2022 to an account of the company at Novobanco.

 According to FNBC, this money resulted from the partial payment of a contract related to the sale of German government bonds. And now it is claiming compensation of €10Bn from Novobanco on account not only of the frozen money, but also of default interest and other penalties.