The head of Millennium PCB says he “hopes the tragic situation in Ukraine will be resolved” and refuses to be a “prophet of perdition”.

Presenting the bank’s results for the first six months of the year (the period in which it made a profit of 74.5 million euros), Miguel Maya said, “We have had good indicators, the European economy continues to grow at a good pace. And in Portugal tourism remains an important driver.”

Maya also sets aside that an increase in financial costs (due to an increase in ECB interest rates) will lead to an increase in bad debt: “I do not expect any increase in non-performing loans in the next two years based on the increase in financial costs.” But this does not mean that this rise cannot happen for other reasons, and he stressed that “there is another thing is energy costs, which can take viable, healthy and well-managed companies out of the market.”

“Taxes fell from heaven? For us there was nothing else”

Maya declined to comment on the possibility of Portugal moving toward a tax on windfall corporate taxes, saying that if there was one thing the bank knew, it was “taxes have fallen from the sky. For us there was nothing else”.

The CEO explained that despite the improvement in results, the return on capital is less than 3%. “I don’t know what profits are falling from the sky,” he said, also recalling that “when BCP asked the state for help, it paid 10%.”

Maya also took the opportunity to insist on criticizing the contributions of the banking sector. BCP paid about 60 million euros, an “unbearable burden” that “undermines competition”. He noted that “in the case of BCP, roughly a quarter of a year is used for the benefit of others and not ours.”