by Ekrem Duman | Aug 30, 2026 | Portugal Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRFour of Portugal’s five largest banks are either state-owned or controlled from abroad. Spanish groups alone accounted for close to 30% of banking assets by mid-2024, and the completion of BPCE’s purchase of novobanco in April 2026 added...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 30, 2026 | Portugal Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRBanco BPI is Portugal’s fifth-largest bank and the clearest working example of the Iberian subsidiary model. Founded in Porto in 1981, it survived the sovereign crisis better than its peers, split off its lucrative but politically complicated...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 30, 2026 | Portugal Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRCaixa Geral de Depósitos is Portugal’s largest bank, wholly owned by the Portuguese state and 150 years old in 2026. Nine years after a €4.9bn recapitalisation that required European Commission approval and a brutal restructuring plan,...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 30, 2026 | Portugal Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRMillennium BCP is Portugal’s largest listed bank and its most internationally exposed one. In 2025 it earned a record €1.02bn net profit, up 12%, with return on equity of 14.1% — but a third of that came from Poland, where its half-owned...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 30, 2026 | Portugal Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRNovobanco is the bank that emerged from the 2014 collapse of Banco Espírito Santo. It lost more than €7bn between 2014 and 2020, was bought by US private-equity firm Lone Star for a token equity injection plus a state-funded loss backstop,...
