The heads of Portugal’s biggest banks Millenium BCP and Banco Espirito Santo, have called on European leaders to stop “playing with fire” and alarming depositors in Eurozone economies.
The top bankers expressed concern that the treatment of Cyprus
has set a new precedent and as a result nervousness in the region
is reaching dangerous levels.
“Leaders need to moderate their language. This could be very
bad,” Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado, chief executive of Banco
Espirito Santo, told the Financial Times.
“If someone had designed a plan to hurt the European market, it
would be difficult to think of something better. You can’t keep
playing with fire,” President of Millenium BCP, Nuno Amado
said, talking about a “Cyprus virus.”
In March Cypriot account holders were told to take a cut on their
savings so that their government could qualify for a bailout
package from the troika of international lenders.
The impact of the shock decision is still being felt in Portugal
and other Eurozone countries, economist Tobias Blattner told RT,
stressing that EU leaders need to come up a concrete plan before
they meet for an EU Summit in June this year.
“There is a very strong consensus that the Cypriot bail-out was
certainly not made in the best way, because it was made in
unpredictable way and I think it clearly rose to the uncertainty
among investors everywhere in euroarea. So there is a strong
consensus there should be a bail-in, which is certainly something
good in a long run but it should be according to clear spelled out
rules and that essence it’s now very important that leaders in
summit in June at the very latest will come out with a very clear
bail-in packing order that uninsured depositors will not be hit in
any restructuring of banks in euroarea in the future.”