Co-operative Bank says it has received several proposals after being put up for sale
The Co-operative Bank has said that it has received a number of “non-binding” proposals from interesting parties since putting itself up for sale earlier in the year.
In a regulatory filing, the bank said that “strategic and financial parties” had shown an interest, and that it had chosen several to “enter a further phase”.
The bank said that it parallel, it “continues to have discussions with existing and other potential new investors on options to build capital”.
Earlier this week, the Co-operative Group posted a pre-tax loss of £132m for 2016, bruised by a £185m hit for writing down the value of its 20 per cent stake in the Co-operative Bank to nothing. The results mean that the mutual has fallen into the red for the first time since 2013.
The bank put itself up for sale in February after it said that that its capacity to organically meet longer-term UK bank regulatory capital requirements had become “constrained by the impact of interest rates that are lower than previously forecast ... and by higher than anticipated transformation and conduct remediation costs”.
In 2013, the bank narrowly avoided collapse after problematic real estate loans left a £1.5bn hole in its capital base.
Bondholders effectively took control of the bank at the time, while the Co-operative Group became a minority shareholder.
