Next week Bank of Cyprus (BoC) will start trading on the London Stock Exchange. This follows an announcement last week…
Mention the words ‘bank’ and ‘Cyprus’ in the same sentence and it is likely to bring back dramatic images of queues at cash tills and angry depositors. Two banks at the centre of the 2013 crisis were the now-defunct Laiki and Bank of Cyprus (BoC). BoC inherited just over €9bn in Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from Laiki, in addition to the €2bn or so it had on its own books, and things were initially very precarious for the bank, even after the bailout programme began. So why am I suggesting that BoC may be the best managed bank in Cyprus?
One of the first figures that hit twitter when Bank of Cyprus (BOC) issued its first-quarter results last week was the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio of 63%. The person tweeting pondered of this meant that the bank was in serious trouble and that it would need yet more capital in a hurry. However, there are a number of reasons to be cheerful about the results of that bank that single-handedly accounts for around 40% of the entire sector.
All we are saying … is give BOC a chance * Time to put the money back in Bank of…