Millennium BCP Proposes Record €509 Million Dividend for 7 May Vote — and Lifts Total Shareholder Return Ceiling to 90% of Annual Profit

Portugal’s largest listed bank, Banco Comercial Português (BCP), will ask shareholders at a general meeting on 7 May to approve a gross dividend of €509 million — the largest cash distribution in the bank’s modern history — and to raise the ceiling on share buybacks from 30 per cent to 40 per cent of annual profit. Combined, the two instruments could channel up to 90 per cent of BCP’s earnings back to shareholders whenever capital ratios allow.

The convocation was lodged on 14 April 2026 and reported the same day by Observador, Jornal Económico and the Notícias ao Minuto newswire. The proposal values the dividend at €0.0344 per share, to be paid from retained earnings and 2025 consolidated profit.

The Numbers Behind the Payout

BCP’s core policy — unchanged since 2023 — commits the bank to distributing at least 50 per cent of distributable annual profit as an ordinary cash dividend. The €509 million figure sits squarely within that corridor and represents a year-on-year increase on the 2024 dividend. The bank finished 2025 with a capital ratio comfortably above regulatory minimums, giving CEO Miguel Maya room to propose the larger buyback envelope without triggering supervisory concerns.

Beyond the dividend itself, two technical resolutions sit on the 7 May agenda:

• A share-capital reduction of up to €240 million through the cancellation of treasury shares.
• A subsequent capital reinstatement to roughly €3 billion, restoring the capital base after the reduction.

This pair of operations is the mechanical housekeeping that lets the bank absorb the buyback it has already carried out while keeping the statutory capital figure stable.

The Shadow From Warsaw

The generous Lisbon payout sits alongside a less comfortable reality in BCP’s Polish subsidiary, Bank Millennium. In early April, Bank Millennium booked €53 million (roughly 190 million zlotys) in fresh Q1 provisions for legal risks tied to historical Swiss-franc mortgage contracts — an open-ended liability Polish banks have been unwinding for years. The provision hits BCP’s consolidated first-quarter result when it publishes on 28 April.

Analysts covering the bank have built expectations around the assumption that Polish CHF provisions would taper in 2026. The Q1 number suggests the unwind is slower than planned. That, combined with an enlarged dividend and buyback, leaves less headroom should supervisory stress tests force an upward revision to capital buffers later in the year.

Why It Matters for Portuguese Households

Millennium BCP is the largest bank on the Lisbon stock exchange by both deposits and domestic mortgage book. Roughly one in every six Portuguese mortgage holders owes BCP, and the bank’s dividend policy is therefore a window into how the broader Portuguese banking sector is pricing the new interest-rate regime. The Euribor peak of 2023 left Portuguese banks flush with net interest income; 2024 and 2025 normalised that picture, but BCP, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Santander Totta and Novo Banco are all now in the position of deciding how much of that windfall to retain and how much to return.

The €509 million dividend sends a clear message: BCP sees current capital levels as robust, expects normalised profitability to persist, and is ready to compete for shareholder capital on the same terms as its European peers. The buyback ceiling increase raises the possibility of further share-price support through the second half of the year.

What to Watch on 7 May

The shareholder vote is a formality on paper — BCP’s reference shareholders, including Chinese insurer Fosun and the EDP Pension Fund, have consistently backed management resolutions. The interesting questions will be around governance: whether Maya addresses the Polish CHF provision trajectory directly; what CFO Miguel Braganca signals on net interest margin guidance for the rest of 2026; and how the board frames the 90 per cent total-payout ceiling relative to ECB supervisory expectations under the latest SREP guidelines.

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