Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: Eleven of Sixteen Rise as Oil Falls Through 100 Dollars, the IRS Cut Reaches Parliament, DBRS Lifts BCP to A

Monday did almost exactly the opposite of Friday, and for a reason that had nothing to do with Portugal. Oil fell through 100 dollars a barrel on evidence that Saudi crude is moving again, European equity markets rallied, bond yields came down across the board, and the euro finally stopped falling against the dollar. Lisbon joined in without leading: eleven of the sixteen PSI names rose, and the index took back a little under three fifths of what it lost on Friday. The domestic news of the day arrived on paper rather than on a screen, when the government's income tax cut was tabled in parliament.

Eleven of Sixteen Rise and the PSI Takes Back 58 Percent of Friday's Fall

The PSI closed at 9,617.39 points, up 75.18 points or 0.79 percent, on Euronext's own figures for the index, stamped 21 September at 17:05. The index opened at 9,550.93, dipped to 9,519.92 at 08:26, and made its high of 9,642.36 at 15:30 before easing into the close. That is a range of 122.44 points across the session, and the shape of it matters: the low came in the first half hour and everything after it was a recovery.

Set against Friday, the arithmetic is partial rather than triumphant. Friday cost the index 128.90 points; today gave back 75.18 of them, which is 58 percent, recomputed here. The 52-week high remains Thursday's 9,671.11, so the index now sits 53.72 points, or 0.56 percent, under its record rather than the 1.33 percent it sat under on Friday evening. The broader PSI All-Share rose 0.64 percent, slightly less than the blue chips.

Eleven constituents rose, one was unchanged and four fell. The reversal was close to name-for-name: on Friday fifteen of the sixteen fell and only Mota-Engil rose; today Friday's heaviest faller, NOS, was the best performer on the board.

Two of those lines are worth a second look. NOS gained 3.16 percent after losing 2.36 percent on Friday, so two sessions have left it 0.72 percent better off than it started; the money that left on Friday came back with interest. Ibersol did the reverse inside a single day, trading up 1.18 percent at 10.28 euros in the morning, on Jornal de Negócios' opening report, and closing down 1.58 percent at a flat 10.00 euros. And Galp fell on a day crude dropped more than 4 percent, which is at least consistent with Friday, when it barely moved on a falling oil price. The pattern over the last four sessions is that Galp does not track oil closely in either direction.

One note on the numbers, because two reputable sources differ slightly. The table above is Euronext's own closing list, stamped 16:35 WEST. ECO's live markets blog, reporting the same session, gives NOS at 5.53 and 2.79 percent, Mota-Engil at 5.125 and 2.19 percent, Jerónimo Martins at 17.94 and 1.59 percent and Corticeira Amorim at 6.92 and minus 1.00 percent. Both sets reconcile against the same Friday closes, so neither is wrong; ECO's are a snapshot taken shortly before the closing auction and Euronext's are the auction itself. We use the exchange's.

Lisbon's 0.79 percent was the second weakest gain in western Europe. On ECO's figures the Stoxx Europe 600 closed up 1.08 percent, the Spanish IBEX-35 up 1.21 percent, the German DAX-40 up 1.14 percent, the French CAC-40 up 0.92 percent, and only the British FTSE-100, up 0.77 percent, did less well than Lisbon. New York opened firm: at 14:35 Lisbon time the S&P 500 was up 0.55 percent at 7,692.83, the Dow up 0.49 percent at 51,936.76 and the Nasdaq up 0.76 percent at 26,723.19, with Intel up 9.54 percent and Accenture up 5.62 percent after announcing a two thousand million dollar artificial-intelligence partnership with Anthropic.

Every Yield We Track Fell, and the American Ten Year Slipped Back Under 5 Percent

The bond market did the work that lifted the equity market. All seven ten-year yields we follow fell, and none by less than four basis points. On TradingEconomics country pages, all now stamped 21 September: Portugal 3.82 percent, down 8 basis points; Germany 3.45, down 7; Spain 3.91, down 8; Greece 4.21, down 8; Italy 4.34, down 10; France 4.47, down 10; and the United States 4.96, down 4.

The American number is the one to mark. It went above 5 percent last week for the first time since 2007, and it is now back below that line. For Portuguese borrowers the effect is felt at one remove, through the euro and through European long rates, but it is the level that has set the tone for a fortnight.

Portugal's own spread over the German Bund narrowed by a basis point to 37, because the Bund fell slightly less than Portugal did. Recomputed from today's levels, Portugal borrows ten-year money 9 basis points inside Spain, 39 inside Greece, 52 inside Italy and 65 inside France. Only Germany, of the seven, pays less. Portuguese ten-year money is still 21 basis points more expensive than it was a month ago and 65 more expensive than a year ago, so a single good day does not undo the direction of travel.

The Euro Broke Its Seven Session Losing Run, and Brent Fell Through 100 Dollars

Yesterday we said the single thing most likely to move Lisbon today was whether the euro broke its losing run. It did. The European Central Bank's reference rate for Monday put the euro at 1.1490 dollars, up from 1.1460 on Friday, a gain of 0.26 percent that ends seven consecutive daily declines. Against sterling the euro slipped slightly, to 0.85780 pounds from 0.85880.

Euribor has nothing new to say yet. The Monday fixings had not published at the time of writing, so Friday's remain the latest: the twelve-month at 3.343 percent and the three-month at 2.620 percent. Portuguese variable-rate mortgages reprice mostly off the six and twelve-month tenors, so Tuesday morning's publication is the next thing that matters to a household here.

Oil was the day's big mover. In late-afternoon trade on TradingEconomics, Brent was at 99.35 dollars a barrel, down 4.35 percent, and West Texas Intermediate at 95.27 dollars, down 5.01 percent. Both figures reconcile exactly against Friday's closes of 103.87 and 100.30. European gas fell harder still, down 8.14 percent to 73.04 euros a megawatt hour.

The reason is supply data rather than peace. Jornal Económico, citing Kpler shipping figures carried by Investing, reports that Saudi oil exports have run above four million barrels a day so far in September, against 2.4 million a day in August. That is the flow reopening, not the conflict closing: over the weekend Saudi forces and the Houthis fought over the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which carries roughly 12 percent of the world's seaborne oil and which Riyadh has been using as an alternative to Hormuz, and the Houthis said they had fired missiles and drones at oil installations around the Saudi capital in reply to Saudi air strikes inside Yemen.

A caution on one figure. The same Jornal Económico piece quotes an intraday West Texas price of 93.55 dollars, down 2.63 percent, which cannot be reconciled with Friday's settlement of 100.30 and appears to refer to a different contract. We have used the TradingEconomics levels, which do reconcile. For the other side of this trade, ECO reported this morning that jet fuel has risen 76 percent since June and that TAP carries less hedging protection against fuel costs than its European peers; that article is behind a paywall and we have not read past its opening, so it is flagged here rather than reported.

The Government's Income Tax Cut Reached Parliament This Morning as Proposta de Lei 108

The fiscal argument that has run through this edition all week acquired a document number today. The parliamentary register of newly entered initiatives lists Proposta de Lei 109/XVII/2 [Governo], 108/XVII/2 and 107/XVII/2, all dated 21 September 2026. The middle one is the income tax cut: it authorises the government to amend the Código do Imposto sobre o Rendimento das Pessoas Singulares (the Personal Income Tax Code, known as IRS) so as to reduce the general rates applying to the first six brackets of taxable income.

The mechanism is a legislative authorisation rather than a direct rate change, valid for up to 180 days, which means parliament votes to let the government legislate rather than legislating itself. According to ECO's reading of the bill, the reductions run between 0.3 and 0.5 percentage points: the first bracket falls 0.3 points to 12.2 percent; the second through fifth fall 0.5 points each, to 15.2, 20.7, 23.6 and 30.6 percent; and the sixth falls 0.3 points to 34.6 percent. Because IRS is progressive, the cut reaches taxpayers above the sixth bracket too, on the slice of their income taxed at the reduced rates. The relief is retroactive to 1 January, and Luís Montenegro has said he wants it visible in the withholding tables applied to November salaries. ECO puts the annual gain for some taxpayers at up to 171 euros.

The bill filed immediately before it, Proposta de Lei 109/XVII/2, extends the life of Lei n.º 12-B/2026 of 15 April, the law that temporarily and exceptionally lowered the minimum unit rates of the imposto sobre os produtos petrolíferos e energéticos (ISP, the tax on petroleum and energy products). That is the fuel duty discount, and the prime minister ruled out going any further on fuel taxes on Friday. The third, 107/XVII/2, authorises the government to approve a legal regime for the interoperability of data and documents across the public administration, the measure meant to stop the state asking citizens for papers it already holds.

The context is the one the finance minister set out at the weekend. Joaquim Miranda Sarmento priced the opposition's two proposed value added tax cuts at roughly 2,000 million euros a year and said they would end the 2027 surplus; those two bills reach the floor on Thursday. The government's answer, filed today, is a smaller income tax cut of its own, and the 2027 State Budget is due in parliament by 10 October. Note also that the Juntos Pelo Povo group tabled a resolution today recommending a temporary value added tax cut on essential foods, which is a third version of the same argument.

DBRS Lifts BCP to A, and Puts Its Deposits a Notch Above the Bank Itself

Morningstar DBRS raised the long-term issuer rating of Banco Comercial Português (BCP) to "A" from "A (low)", keeping a stable trend. It also lifted the long-term deposit rating to "A (high)", one notch above the bank's own intrinsic assessment, on the ground that Portuguese law gives depositors full preference in an insolvency or a bank resolution. The shares closed up 0.89 percent at 1.1865 euros, and had been up more than 1 percent early in the session.

The agency's reasoning, as reported by Jornal Económico, is consistency rather than any single event: loan book growth, high net interest margins, controlled operating costs and what it calls a moderate cost of risk. It expects BCP to hold its current profitability, helped by the resilience of the Portuguese economy and labour market, and it singles out the gradual retreat of the legacy Swiss-franc mortgage book at Bank Millennium, the Polish subsidiary in which BCP holds 50.1 percent and whose provisions have weighed on group results for years.

The half-year figures behind the decision: net profit up 12.7 percent year on year to 566.1 million euros, with Portugal supplying 83 percent of group results; net interest income up 3.4 percent and fee income up 5.8 percent; return on equity at 15.0 percent against 14.5 percent a year earlier. Non-performing loans fell 10.5 percent and the net NPL ratio stood at 0.1 percent at the end of June, below the average for comparable European banks. Total assets were 114.8 thousand million euros, and the CET1 ratio was 15.3 percent, a cushion of 521 basis points over the minimum regulatory requirement, with a total capital ratio of 19.5 percent.

DBRS named its triggers in both directions. A structural improvement in earnings generation, alongside a sound risk profile and strong capital, could support further upgrades; a material and sustained deterioration in profitability or asset quality would push the other way. This is the second credit-rating improvement for a Portuguese issuer this month, after Fitch lifted the sovereign to A+ on 4 September.

Motorola Solutions Buys DeepNeuronic Outright, and the Team Stays in Covilhã

The tech story of the day is a full exit. Motorola Solutions has bought 100 percent of the share capital of DeepNeuronic, a Portuguese artificial-intelligence company, including its Brazilian subsidiary. The deal is reported by ECO, drawing on the law firm Cuatrecasas, which advised the sellers; no price has been disclosed and Motorola Solutions had not published a release of its own at the time of writing.

DeepNeuronic was founded in 2021 by Vasco Lopes and Bruno Degardin and is based in Covilhã. Its software analyses video in real time to flag situations a customer has defined as risky, which in practice means turning ordinary existing cameras into an analysis system without replacing the hardware. Its own site describes deployments across transport, retail and industrial operations, and ECO lists airports, bridges, motorways and commercial spaces in Portugal, with the Brazilian arm used to monitor mobility and security operations.

What happens next is the interesting part for anyone tracking where Portuguese engineering ends up. The software is being folded into Avigilon, Motorola Solutions' video security platform, which puts it in front of customers in more than a hundred countries. The team moves across with it and stays at the Covilhã headquarters, with part of it working remotely, so this is not an acqui-hire that empties a building in the interior. Cuatrecasas, whose venture capital partner Vasco Bivar de Azevedo led the transaction with lawyers José Archer de Carvalho and Inês Câmara Pestana, called it one of the rare exits in Portugal this year of a technology startup built entirely in the country.

That claim is worth holding lightly, since "rare" is the seller's adviser talking. But it lands in a month when Portugal is trying to argue it can hold this kind of company: a deep tech cohort in Porto filled thirty-one of forty places, and the Sines bid for an EU artificial-intelligence gigafactory is due on 12 November. A clean international exit is evidence for both sides of that argument at once.

Galp Wants an Industrial Partner to Grow Renewables Outside Iberia, but Says There Is No Process Open

Georgios Papadimitriou, Galp's chief operating officer for Renewables and New Businesses, told Jornal de Negócios the company is looking for a partner to accelerate its renewable energy business beyond the Iberian Peninsula. He frames it as a bet on the sector consolidating: the fragmentation that exists in renewables "will end up being reversed", he said, and there will be "fewer operators and they will be bigger", though not within one or two years. His comparison is with oil exploration and production, where joint ventures are routine. "We ask ourselves why we cannot explore the same logic in the renewables business."

He was specific about what a partner would be for, and equally specific about how far this has got. "We can grow on our own, but a partnership could bring knowledge, technological diversification, investment capacity and a presence outside the Iberian Peninsula. That is what we are exploring, but there is no process open." What he wants is an industrial partner rather than a financial one: "we need a good industrial story and a partnership in which the parties complement each other". And there is no deadline attached. "We are in no hurry, and we do not want to do a partnership at any price. Our objective is value creation."

The timing is what makes it news. Galp is currently finalising the merger of its refining and fuel distribution business with Moeve, so the renewables arm is the part of the company whose future shape is still open. Galp closed down 0.46 percent at 21.79 euros, one of the day's four fallers.

The Jerónimo Martins Family's Glass Company Puts Its Spanish Insulator Arm Up for Sale

Verescence, the luxury perfume and cosmetics bottle maker owned by Movendo Capital, the investment vehicle of the Soares dos Santos family who control Jerónimo Martins, and by the Portuguese fund manager Draycott, has hired Lincoln International to explore the sale of its stake in La Granja Insulators. The Spanish business, based at Real Sitio de San Ildefonso, makes glass insulators for high-voltage power lines. ECO reports the story from a Spanish newspaper's account, sourced to people familiar with the matter.

The asset is small but profitable: turnover above 50 million euros and EBITDA close to 20 million, which ECO says places it second in Europe in that activity. The reason for selling is growth rather than distress. La Granja is finishing an expansion plan that may include building a new plant to double its capacity, and it needs new shareholders to pay for it. The buyers' case is the electrification of everything: electric vehicles, heat pumps and data centres all mean more high-voltage line, and every span of it needs insulators.

Movendo Capital and Draycott bought 100 percent of Verescence from Stirling Square for 490 million euros in 2025, and Draycott's founding partner João Coelho Borges said at the time that the plan was to strengthen the business in the United States and invest in sustainability and digitalisation at its glass plants, including replacing gas furnaces with hybrids. Selling the insulator arm is consistent with that: it concentrates the group on perfume and cosmetics glass and releases capital to do it. Jerónimo Martins itself is not a party to the transaction; this is the family's separate investment vehicle.

Greece Joined the Stoxx Europe 600 Today, and Passes Lisbon in the World Indices in May

A change with no Portuguese announcement behind it took effect this morning and is worth a Portuguese investor's attention. The index provider Stoxx reclassified the Greek equity market from emerging to developed, and nine Greek listed companies joined the Stoxx Europe 600, the main European benchmark. MSCI makes the same change in May 2027, and Jornal de Negócios reports that when it does, Athens' weight in world equity indices will pass Lisbon's.

Weight in a global index is not a beauty contest. It determines how much money tracking that index is mechanically obliged to hold in a market, which is most of the flow a small exchange gets. Greece was thrown out of the developed category in 2013, at the bottom of its crisis, and has spent more than a decade getting back. Portugal has stayed in developed status throughout and is about to be overtaken by the country that left. Nothing about today's PSI session changes that, and it is the kind of structural fact that only shows up in the price slowly.

Tomorrow

Tuesday is light on Portuguese data and heavy on presentation. The euro area flash consumer confidence reading lands at 15:00 Lisbon time, having stood at minus 15.5 in August after minus 15.9 in July, a fourth consecutive monthly improvement and the best since February; and the prime minister rings the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in the afternoon. Wednesday is the one to mark, when the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE, the statistics institute) publishes at 11:00 the second Excessive Deficit Procedure notification of the year, carrying the final 2025 general government balance and debt.

The thing most likely to set Lisbon's direction tomorrow is whether oil keeps falling. Today's rally in European equities, the drop in yields and the euro's recovery all traced back to the same barrel, and Monday was the fourth consecutive session of declines in the crude price. If Saudi export volumes hold up, the sequence continues; if the Bab el-Mandeb fighting closes the route again, it reverses in a morning.