Lisbon, Portugal, 6 Dec – Santoro Finance – Prestação de Serviços last week bought almost 700,000 shares in Portuguese bank BPI for around 986,000 euros, thus adding to the shares it already owned, the company said in a regulatory filing.

According to a statement filed with Portuguese stock market regulator CMVM, Santoro Finance – Prestação de Serviços said it had acquired a further 698,919 shares in Banco BPI in purchases on the 26 November and 2 December, and paid a total of 986,354 euros.

With these acquisition, the company owned by Angolan businesswoman, and daughter of the Angolan president, Isabel dos Santos, now has a 9.88 percent stake in Banco BPI.

On 25 November, Santoro Finance told the regulator it had acquired a further 997,00 BPI shares and at the time had a 9.8 percent stake in the Portuguese bank.

Santoro Finance – Prestação de Serviços also owns 25 percent of BIC Portugal, an Angolan banking subsidiary.

In Angola, BPI sold 49 percent of Banco de Fomento de Angola to Unitel, a telecommunications operators and one of the largest companies in Angola, which has Geni, a company also linked to Isabel dos Santos, as a shareholder with 25 percent.

The main shareholders of BPI are Spain’s, La Caixa, with almost 30 percent, Brazil’s Itaú bank, with 20 percent and German insurer Allianz, with around 10 percent. (macauhub)