Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: BA Glass Closes Tunisia, BPCE Pays €1bn to Fundo de Resolução, IMF Calls Out Lisbon's ISP Top-Up

Bolsa Closed for a Second Weekend Day at 9,344.96 — 16-Year High Held Through the Long Weekend, OT-Bund Spread at 43bps, Euro at 1.175

Euronext Lisbon's regulated cash market is closed on weekends and was already shut on Friday for the 1.º de Maio Labour Day holiday; the next live print is Monday 4 May 2026 at the open. The PSI ended Thursday's session at 9,344.96 points, a 1.47% daily gain and the strongest close since June 2008, lifted by the formal closing of BPCE's €6.7 billion takeover of Novo Banco and a broad re-rating of Portuguese banking exposure. The print held flat through Friday's holiday and the full weekend, leaving the index at a roughly 1.5% weekly gain with the next round-number target the 10,000-point line last visited briefly in 2008. Cash equity turnover on the closing session ran at €148 million, well above the €110 million 30-day rolling average. Portugal's benchmark 10-year Obrigações do Tesouro yield closed Friday's cross-market trading at roughly 3.46% — about four basis points wider on the week — with the Bund-OT spread at around 43 basis points, comfortably below the 60bps level last seen in early 2024 and consistent with the IGCP's strong primary-market reception this spring. EUR/USD stayed parked near 1.175 across the holiday-thin tape, inside the 1.172-1.180 range that has held since the Iran-war risk-off episode; Brent November 2026 futures sit just under $108 per barrel with the curve in modest backwardation.

BA Glass Closes Its First North African Deal — 41% of Tunisia's Sotuver via Dutch Holding, 650-Worker Khelidia Plant Joins a 13-Factory Footprint

The container-glass group BA Glass, headquartered in Avintes (Vila Nova de Gaia) and turning over roughly €1.5 billion across 13 factories and five recycling units in Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and Mexico, has closed its first acquisition in North Africa. Acting through Dutch holding BA Glass B.V., the group has taken a 41% stake in Société Tunisienne de Verreries (Sotuver) — the Bourse de Tunis-listed glass-packaging producer whose 650-worker plant sits at Khelidia, about 30 kilometres outside Tunis. The fourteen-month regulatory file ran from initial March-2025 notification through Tunisia's Competition Council in late September, the Ministry of Commerce approval on 4 March 2026, and final CMF clearance on 2 April 2026 for the transfer of 16,204,636 shares. The Bayahi Group retains a comparable stake plus the General Manager seat, framing the deal as a strategic partnership rather than an outright takeover. Sotuver's nine-month-2025 revenue ran at TND 81.8 million (about $27.9 million) on a 7% growth print; the Khelidia plant gives BA Glass a Mediterranean industrial hub for the West African and Middle Eastern export book and complements an Iberian-and-UK furnace network running at near-permanent capacity. BA Glass is privately held — the founding Silva family took the company off the Lisbon exchange in 2007 — so the deal does not show up on the PSI tape; for tape-relevant industrial M&A it sits inside a broader 2026 pattern of Portuguese outbound deals targeting Mediterranean and Brazilian assets, alongside Galp's Moeve gas-trading restructure and Teixeira Duarte's €1.6-billion-order-book international tilt.

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BPCE's €1 Billion Cheque Lands at the Fundo de Resolução — Covers Only About 15% of the Vehicle's State-and-Banking-Sector Liabilities

Saturday's Jornal de Negócios ran chair Luís Máximo dos Santos on the size and shape of BPCE's first payment to the Fundo de Resolução — Portugal's bank-resolution vehicle, which still carries the long-tail liabilities from both the 2014 Banco Espírito Santo split that produced Novo Banco and the 2015 Banif resolution. The €1 billion first cheque, paid as part of the BPCE takeover of Novo Banco that closed Thursday, covers only about 15% of the vehicle's combined liabilities to the State and to the rest of the banking sector. The residual stub runs through the BPCE-owned earn-out structure and through ongoing contributions from Portuguese banks; for the listed PSI banks, the practical read-through is that BCP continues to face a Fundo de Resolução annual contribution well into the 2030s, but the headline-risk on a fresh capital call has receded materially with the BPCE close. The Fundo's repayment plan is the single largest off-balance-sheet exposure that has hung over the Portuguese banking sector since 2014; Saturday's framing is that the file is now in run-off rather than active resolution, which is the analytical pivot the bank-sector desks have been waiting for.

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Miranda Sarmento Lifts the ISP Discount Again Into Monday's Pump-Price Reset — IMF's Kammer Says the Permanent-Burden Trap Is Closing on Lisbon

Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento formalised a fresh ISP fuel-tax discount top-up on Saturday ahead of Monday's monthly pump-price reset: diesel relief climbs to €75.48 per 1,000 litres and gasoline to €51.97 per 1,000 litres. ANAREC's industry forecast still has diesel rising about 10 cents per litre and gasoline about 6.5 cents per litre at the pump on Monday — the discount narrows the increase, it does not eliminate it. The IMF used the cover of its Regional Economic Outlook for Europe the same weekend to fire a fresh warning at member states still leaning on broad-based fuel relief. Alfred Kammer, director of the IMF European department, framed the case bluntly: roughly two-thirds of EU energy subsidies are untargeted, the package now runs at an estimated 0.18% of GDP drag on aggregate eurozone public finances, and the schemes — once introduced — are politically very difficult to reverse, creating a permanent fiscal burden out of what was sold as an emergency measure. Portugal was named alongside Germany, Spain and Italy as a serial extender. The OE 2026 still books a small 0.1%-of-GDP surplus, but Miranda Sarmento has already publicly conceded the projection is at risk and a small deficit is on the table — a probabilistic admission already captured in the Programa de Estabilidade revision sent to Brussels and in the IMF's own April growth downgrade to 1.9% with inflation lifted to 3.1%. The IGCP's 7 May calendar slot sits empty of auctions; the next syndicated-tap window opens in mid-May, with Tuesday's European Commission Spring Forecast and Friday's US non-farm payrolls the dominant duration drivers.

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Sampaio Nunes Pitches Two Chinese-Built 1,200 MW Reactors at €10 Billion — Sunday Público Carries the CNNC Confirmation, No Brussels Engagement

Sunday Público's economy section carried former Secretary of State for Science and Innovation Pedro Sampaio Nunes arguing that Portugal's current renewables-only energy strategy is insustentável and confirming conversações exploratórias with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) on siting two large reactors. The numbers: two 1,200 MW units, an investment envelope of around €10 billion at roughly €4,000 per kilowatt, and a six-year construction window that pushes commercial operation no earlier than 2032. The interview is an outsider intervention rather than a government plan — Brussels has not been formally engaged, no site has been selected, and no parliamentary majority exists for revising Portugal's de facto nuclear-free posture, with Environment Minister Maria da Graça Carvalho holding the line on the wind-solar-hydro-storage path. For the PSI's electricity desks, the practical signal is the cost-of-energy debate's reopening rather than imminent capex flow: a Chinese-built reactor in an EU member state would face intense Brussels and Washington scrutiny under the foreign-subsidy and economic-security regimes, and Spain's Almaraz Unit 1 closure — scheduled for 2027 — is the more market-relevant Iberian nuclear datapoint into the next price cycle on the MIBEL.

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Curiouz Hits 5,000 Listings and €280,000 Cumulative Sales as Bárbara Neto Launches Buyer-Subscription Tier on Monday

The Lisbon-headquartered vintage-and-classic-furniture marketplace Curiouz, founded by interior designer Bárbara Neto at the end of 2024, opened May 2026 with three milestones bundled into one week: more than 5,000 active listings, accumulated sales above €280,000, and a paid buyer-subscription tier for professional buyers going live on Monday 4 May. The platform admitted just 332 verified sellers from more than 600 applications — a sub-50% acceptance rate that frames the curated, not open-marketplace positioning. Average commission runs 18% per transaction, ceiling at 22% on certain categories, plus a percentage-based logistics fee. The geography matters: the United States generated 80% of 2025 sales on the back of an interior-decorator partnership tied to Jeff Bezos's circle, but the US share dropped to 52% in Q1 2026 as European demand caught up post the Milan Design Week debut. Total funding to date is roughly €330,000, led by Angels Way in October 2025 alongside a Belgian impact fund and individual backers including Anabela Ferreira and Vera Baker; Neto is steering toward operational profitability before a Series A. Year-end target is €1 million in sales. Curiouz reads as one of the cleaner 2026 tests of whether founder-led, capital-light Portuguese consumer-tech can build a high-curation, low-CAC marketplace and export it without immediately relocating to London or Berlin.

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Outlook: Monday Bundles the EDP Ex-Dividend, the First Full Session Under BPCE-Owned Novo Banco, the Pump-Price Hike — Then CTT, EDPR and EDP Earnings

Lisbon's reopening on Monday, 4 May 2026 bundles three immediate market inputs: the mechanical opening cut on EDP for the €0.20 ex-dividend (record date 5 May, payment 8 May); the first full trading session with Novo Banco trading under direct BPCE ownership after Thursday's deal close; and the start of the monthly fuel-price cycle with diesel and gasoline both rising at the pump despite the lifted ISP discount — a positive read-across for Galp's downstream margins but a negative for cyclical retail and consumer names. CTT earnings on Tuesday, the European Commission Spring Forecast on Tuesday, and the EDPR/EDP double-print on Wednesday dominate the week's macro and corporate calendar; BCP's Q1 release lands later in May, with the Bank Millennium Polish print already on the tape (Q1 net profit +68% to €71.2 million) setting a constructive read-through. The IGCP holds no auction on the 7 May slot, leaving the next syndicated tap window open into mid-May, and the week closes with US non-farm payrolls on Friday 8 May.