Fidelidade Lines Up 35% Share Sale to Force an Entry into the PSI — Fosun Stays Majority, CGD Weighs Doubling Its Stake to 30%, Lazard Runs the 2027 Book

Portugal's biggest insurer, Fidelidade, is preparing a capital dispersion of between 34% and 35% as the mechanism to force its way into Euronext Lisbon's benchmark PSI index, according to reporting picked up on Friday, 24 April 2026, by Jornal Económico and confirmed in an ECO morning wrap. The float size is not a marketing number; it is the precise threshold the insurer needs to clear the PSI's free-float liquidity rules — a €100 million minimum free-float capitalisation, at least 15% of capital in public hands, and annual share-trading velocity of 10% or better. Anything under 34% and Fidelidade would re-enter a main market it helped define before Fosun's 2014 takeover but would still sit outside the index that matters to passive-index ETF flows.

Who ends up owning Fidelidade the day after

On the arithmetic sketched this week, after the operation:

• Fosun International — Shanghai-listed parent — would keep 50% (if 35% is placed) or 51% (if 34%), preserving consolidated control and the Chinese group's voting majority.
• Caixa Geral de Depósitos — Portugal's state-owned bank — currently holds 15%. Reporting this week indicates CGD is studying a doubling of its position to 30% as a “cornerstone investor,” although CGD chairman Paulo Macedo has publicly said “there are no ongoing negotiations with Fosun” and any move would depend on the IPO terms.
• Public float — the remaining 34% to 35% placed on Euronext Lisbon.

If CGD does step up, the state's share of the country's largest insurer would rise — an unusual outcome in a capital markets transaction that is officially about listing, not re-nationalising.

The numbers on the table

Bloomberg, which first reported the revived IPO mandate in February, valued 100% of Fidelidade at around €3.5 billion. CEO Rogério Campos Henriques has said the listing price could be “significantly higher than three billion” — wording that implies an opening reference closer to the Bloomberg number than to a conservative floor. Lazard was appointed as independent financial adviser on 20 April to run the book; additional global coordinators and a syndicate have not yet been disclosed. The transaction is pencilled in for 2027, giving the company room to clear one more full-year audited cycle under IFRS 17 reporting before meeting investors on the road.

What a Fidelidade listing does for Lisbon

The PSI currently counts only 16 listed companies and has seen no major new listing since Greenvolt joined the index in 2021. An insurer with €3.5 billion in implied valuation would immediately move into the index's top quartile on market cap, next to Galp, EDP and Jerónimo Martins, and would meaningfully change the sector mix — the PSI has no other listed insurer of comparable scale since the delisting of Banco Espírito Santo-era holdings. For the state, it would also give Caixa a quoted comparable for Fidelidade's equity value that currently sits inside the balance sheet as a participated minority.

What to watch in the coming weeks

The formal IPO timetable has not been tabled, and the structure — primary issue, secondary sell-down by Fosun, or a mix — is unresolved. What is worth tracking:

• Whether the final placement is 34% or 35%, which decides whether Fosun holds 50% or 51%
• Whether CGD's board submits a formal reinforcement plan to the government for approval
• The choice of global coordinators after Lazard
• Any Fosun disposal of its ultimate ownership of Luz Saúde or Banco BiG — both within the same Portuguese portfolio — that could signal a broader balance-sheet rotation back toward Shanghai

For now, the insurer is not yet listing; it is positioning. But positioning inside the rulebook of a specific index, backed by the country's largest state bank, is as close as Portuguese capital markets get to a scheduled event.