ECONOMY

BoC must emerge from crisis stronger, says adviser

Bank of Cyprus Pcl, the lender forced to impose losses on uninsured depositors in return for the country’s 10-billion-euro bailout, must emerge stronger from the financial crisis, an independent adviser on the Cyprus banking system said.

Bank of Cyprus’s absorption of second-biggest lender Cyprus Popular Bank Pcl is a “difficult merger which contains considerable execution risk,” according to a report issued on Thursday by the Independent Commission on the Future of the Cyprus Banking Sector.

“Everyone has got to put a full effort into making a success of this merger, because if it fails one doesn’t really want to think what the consequences of that will be,” David Lascelles, the commission’s chairman, said in an interview in Nicosia.

“Bank of Cyprus could emerge in a year and a half or two years as a very strong bank.”

[Bloomberg]

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