Spain's Caixabank launches new takeover bid for Banco BPI
(Adds details, background, share price; refiled to transpose paragraphs 5 and 6)
* Offer for 55.9 pct of BPI worth 908 million euros
* Bid dependent on removal of 20 pct shareholder rights limitation
* Offer comes after deal fell through with Isabel dos Santos
By Jose Elías Rodríguez
MADRID, April 18 (Reuters) - Spain's Caixabank said on Monday it was making a fresh takeover offer worth around $1 billion for the 56 percent of Portuguese lender Banco BPI that it does not already own, after a key obstacle was removed on Sunday.
The offer, of 1.113 euros per share, is conditional on the Portuguese bank eliminating a 20 percent cap on any one shareholder's voting rights, the Spanish bank said in a statement to the stock market regulator.
Portugal's government approved a measure late on Sunday to end such shareholder voting limits at its banks, helping clear the way for the offer.
Before that was passed, the shareholder limit prevented Caixabank from being able to use the full weight of its 44 percent stake in BPI in overcoming Angolan billionaire investor Isabel dos Santos's resistance to Caixabank taking over BPI and detaching its majority-owned Angolan bank, BFA.
With Caixabank's voting rights limited to 20 percent, the lender's influence at BPI was little more than that of dos Santos, the daughter of Angola's president who owns 18.6 percent through Lisbon-based holding company Santoro Finance.
Caixabank and Santoro are BPI's two largest shareholders and the Spanish bank has been trying to buy dos Santos out and gain full control of BPI for at least a year.
On Sunday BPI announced the collapse of a deal agreed earlier this month for Caixabank to at last buy out Dos Santos and at the same time reduce its exposure to BFA by selling down its stake to Dos Santos.
BPI owns 50.1 percent of BFA while Unitel, the Angolan telecom firm dos Santos controls jointly with state oil company Sonangol, holds 49.9 percent, but new European banking rules took effect this month which required BPI to make full provision for BFA's lending risks or else face daily fines.
Santoro said in a statement on Saturday that under the deal dos Santos had wanted BFA's shares to be listed in Lisbon, something Portuguese regulators opposed.
"For Caixabank we believe the acquisition would be neutral taking into account that BPI only represents 12 percent of total assets, although we believe the final bid removes the risk of the Spanish bank increasing the bid price in an attempt to convince dos Santos," Haitong Research said in an investor note.
Trading in BPI has been suspended since April 8, when the shares closed at 1.191 euros. Caixabank's shares were down 3 percent at 2.598 euros per share by 0844 GMT on Monday.
Caixabank expects the acquisition, which it hopes to close by the end of the third quarter, to hit its core capital solvency ratio by between 0.97 and 1.46 percentage points, depending on acceptance levels.
The lender reiterated it maintained a full-loaded core capital ratio goal of over 11 percent of assets following the buyout, in line with its 2015-2018 strategic plans
The Spanish bank said it saw annual cost synergies from the deal of around 85 million euros by the third year and revenue synergies of 35 million euros per year. It estimated restructuring costs of around 250 million euros.
($1 = 0.8852 euros) (Additional reporting and writing by Paul Day; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
