Type
Merger/Acquisition
Country
Cyprus
Region
Kypros / Kibris;
Location of affected unit(s)
All units of Cyprus Cooperative Bank country wide
Sector
Financial Services
Financial And Insurance Activities
Financial Service Activities, Except Insurance And Pension Funding
64.19 - Other monetary intermediation

800 - 900 jobs
Number of planned job losses
Job loss
Announcement Date
18 June 2018
Employment effect (start)
21 June 2018
Foreseen end date
21 August 2018

Description

The offer of the Hellenic Bank for the acquisition of the since 2013 state-owned Cyprus Cooperative Bank (CCB) was accepted by the Council of Ministers on 15 June 2018 in an extraordinary meeting. The CCB plans 900 redundancies to be carried out on volunteer basis within the framework of a compensation scheme, now under negotiation with the Bank's unions. The compensation scheme shall provide redundancy payments, according to length of service to employees, who volunteer for the redundancy; an upper ceiling shall apply. The unions entered into negotiations with the aim to strike an upper ceiling as high as possible, so as to facilitate that the scheme becomes attractive for a consistent number of CCB's employees, especially those who are not far from retirement age.

The deal foresees that the Hellenic Bank takes over 1,100 of the  current 2,650 CCB's employees. 650 of the CCB's employees shall remain a) in an entity to be formed after the conclusion of the acquisition for the administration of remaining assets and b) in the joint venture that the CCB created last year with the Spanish AltaMira company for the management of non-performing loans, while the remaining 900 employees shall be included in the compensation scheme.

The Hellenic Bank will get the so called "good part" of the bank, that is the deposits and performing loans, while the "bad part" and some other remaining assets shall be transferred to an entity to be formed at the conclusion of the agreement.


Sources

Citation

Eurofound (2018), Cyprus Cooperative Bank, Merger/Acquisition in Cyprus, factsheet number 94377, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/94377.