European bailouts in Greece and Ireland yielded poor results and dented market confidence in the countries' banking sectors, the chief executive of Portuguese bank Banco Espirito Santo has said.

"The results of the interventions in Greece and Ireland were poor," Ricardo Salgado said in an interview with the Financial Times.

"The (interest) rates were too high, the (debt had) too short a maturity. And also the intervention was done in such a way that the markets of those countries lost confidence in the banking sector," he said.

Mr Salgado said Portugal, which relies heavily on the European Central Bank for liquidity, could avoid a bailout if the ECB continued to provide it with funding.

"I believe Portugal can sustain its position without moving into the European (bailout) programme if the ECB continues to act as they did before."

He said BES, Portugal's biggest listed bank, now relied on ECB emergency funding for €5 billion of liquidity, up from less than €4 billion at the end of 2010.

Reuters