Bank of Cyprus held 30 meetings with some of the world’s largest investment funds — including Wellington, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and AllianceBernstein — at the Morgan Stanley European Financial Conference in London on Tuesday, in what bank sources described as the strongest investor interest the bank has ever attracted at such an event.
Each meeting involved between five and six investment organisations, all managing multi-billion-dollar portfolios, according to the same sources.
Investors were strongly positive about the bank’s performance, describing it as one of the most impressive turnarounds in European banking and ranking it among the best-capitalised banks on the continent, bank sources said. Discussions focused on the bank’s business plan, which investors regarded as an unusually strong combination of high capitalisation, solid liquidity, robust profitability and an attractive dividend policy — a profile that bank sources said set it apart from regional peers.
The bank’s recently announced dividend targets drew particular attention, with investors describing them as significantly more generous than those of comparable banks in the region.
Furthermore, investors appeared to view heightened geopolitical uncertainty as the new normal, with European banks seen as well-capitalised and capable of navigating the current environment, according to bank sources.
While investors acknowledged Cyprus’s proximity to the Middle East, they viewed both the bank and the broader Cypriot economy positively — and saw potential for Cyprus to benefit from the regional situation over the medium term, sources said.
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