Hundreds of thousands march against austerity in Portugal

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities Saturday to protest against the government's austerity measures aimed at rescuing the debt-hit eurozone nation.

The rallies were organised by a non-political movement which claimed 500,000 marched in the country's capital and another 400,000 in the main northern city of Porto. There have been no official estimates of the crowds.

But the mood of the crowd was clearly political, calling for new elections with banners declaring "Portugal to the polls!" and "If you fall asleep in a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship".

Another banner showed a picture of centre-right Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho with the caption: "Today I am in the street, tomorrow it will be you." Read more >>

3 Portuguese Banks Lose More Than 660 Million in 5 Days

Bank Millennium 

Cut the rating of Spanish banks and the poor performance of the largest Portuguese banks have caused a loss of more than EUR 660 million in capitalization of the BES, Millennium bcp and the BPI.

Within a year, the market value of the BES, Millennium bcp and the BPI fell 61%. Only at the end of last week, after the rating of Spanish banks have been revised downwards again, the three Portuguese private banks lost more than 660 million in market capitalization.

BES was the bank most penalized, having lost about 570 million of value in exchange, as a result of a fall of 22.26% in the share price. Millennium bcp, that seemed no longer able to fall much more, yet depreciated 4.85%, with its share to fall up to 9.6 cents.

Translated Source