Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: Mota-Engil Jumps 5.4% on Bogota, the State Completes Its REN Purchase, Eight Bid for Azores Airlines

Yesterday the PSI rose because only five of its sixteen constituents did, and they happened to be the heaviest five. Today it did it the ordinary way: thirteen names green, three red, and a 0.66% gain that no other major European market came close to matching. Mota-Engil rose 5.42% on news that it is back in the running for a Bogota metro line it was disqualified from once already. Away from the tape, the Portuguese state completed its purchase of 13.7% of REN from the family office of the man who founded Zara, and the prime minister used a censure debate to put the Galp and Moeve refining merger in the sovereignty file.

Thirteen of Sixteen Rose, and Lisbon Left the Rest of Europe Behind

The PSI closed at 9,481.29 points, up 62.16 points or 0.66%, its second consecutive gain. It opened at 9,423.38, ran as low as 9,413.16 and as high as 9,500.40, and finished 0.73% below the 9,550.72 top of its 52-week range. That range bottoms at 7,639.48. The index is up 1,676.01 points on the year, which is 21.5% from where it started. The broader PSI Geral did better again, adding 0.75% to 6,443.81.

Thirteen constituents rose, three fell, and for once the breadth and the index pointed the same way. Here is the whole board, sorted by the day's move:

The two construction names led, which is not a sentence Lisbon gets to write often. Mota-Engil added 5.42% to 5.075 euros and Teixeira Duarte 2.19% to 0.4895 euros, on the day the Bogota news broke. Galp Energia was next at plus 1.79% to 21.09 euros, carried by another leg up in crude: Brent reached 97.27 dollars a barrel, up 0.12% on the day but 10.9% on the month and 46.5% on the year, and West Texas Intermediate rose 0.75% to 92.16 dollars. Jerónimo Martins gained 1.71% to 18.42 euros and EDP 1.15% to 4.744 euros, so three of the four heaviest names in the index were pulling the same way.

The falls were narrow. EDP Renováveis gave back 1.71% to 13.19 euros, handing back most of the 2.13% it led the board with on Monday. Sonae eased 0.49% and Corticeira Amorim 0.14%. Between them those three carry about 18.9 billion euros of the index's roughly 94.8 billion, so the arithmetic was never in doubt. Banco Comercial Português extended Monday's move, adding 0.91% to 1.168 euros and holding above the 1.15 euro line it crossed yesterday for the first time in more than eleven years.

What makes the session unusual is the comparison. The DAX finished dead flat at 26,007.63, up 1.10 points. The CAC 40 rose 0.14% to 8,317.98, the Euronext 100 0.22% to 1,921.17 and the AEX 0.06% to 1,116.05, while the IBEX 35 fell 0.12% to 19,997.10 and the FTSE 100 0.10% to 10,812. Lisbon's 0.66% was roughly three times the best of them. Wall Street was lower through the Lisbon evening, the S&P 500 off 0.42% at 7,686 in a session that fuel prices were pressuring, and gold slipped 0.27% to 4,393.22 dollars an ounce.

Mota-Engil Is Back in a Five Billion Euro Bogota Race It Was Thrown Out Of

Mota-Engil's consortium has re-entered pre-qualification for the construction of line 2 of the Bogota metro, in Colombia, a project budgeted at more than five billion euros. So has the consortium led by the Spanish group Sacyr, and so has a Chinese consortium. That is the whole story in one sentence, and it added roughly 80 million euros to the Portuguese group's market value in a day.

The history is what gives it weight. On the first attempt to put the work out to tender, Mota-Engil's grouping was disqualified following a protest lodged by Sacyr's. Sacyr then declined to submit a bid of its own, and the tender did not produce a contractor. Both are now back at the same starting line on the same project, and the Portuguese group is running it without the procedural cloud that ended its first attempt.

Read against the order book, this is the third continent in five weeks. Mota-Engil signed a 207 million dollar early-works contract for ExxonMobil in Mozambique yesterday, took 185 million euros of Mexican urban mobility work in July, and spun its African mining arm into a standalone company in August. Latin American metro work is the one line of business where it has repeatedly proved it can win against Spanish incumbents on their own linguistic and commercial ground. A five billion euro pre-qualification is not a contract, and the market treated a 5.42% move as the appropriate size of the option rather than the prize.

The State Now Owns 13.7% of REN, and the Zara Fortune Has Left the Register

Pontegadea Inversiones, the investment vehicle of Inditex founder Amancio Ortega, told the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (Securities Market Commission) through REN today that it has sold 91,723,676 shares, or 13.7% of the capital of REN, Redes Energéticas Nacionais (National Energy Networks), to the state holding company Parpública. The sale was executed over the counter. The suspensive condition written into the 14 August purchase agreement, prior approval from the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors), has now been verified, which is the formal way of saying the auditors signed it off. Pontegadea adds that it no longer holds a qualifying stake, or any shares or voting rights at all, in the company.

Neither side disclosed the price, in August or now. Jornal Económico reported that the value written into the contract sent to the Court of Auditors was 380 million euros. Set that figure against the 91.7 million shares changing hands and it implies about 4.14 euros a share, against a market close today of 3.50 euros. That is a premium of roughly 18% to the screen, on a reported number neither party has confirmed, and it is the single most interesting unverified figure in Portuguese energy this week.

Pontegadea's own return is easier to bound. It bought 12% from Oman's Mazoon in 2021, at a share price of 12.06 euros on the day, which values that first block near 190 million euros. The remaining 1.7% was picked up in the second half of 2025, when REN traded between 3 and 3.4 euros, putting that block somewhere between 30 and 38.5 million euros. On ECO's arithmetic the capital gain over five years lands between 96.2 and 104.7 million euros. State Grid Corporation of China remains the largest shareholder at 25%, and the Portuguese state is now the second.

The politics arrived in parliament the same afternoon. Challenged on the purchase by the Communist leader Paulo Raimundo during the censure motion debate, Luís Montenegro said it was "a little superficial" to read the operation as leading immediately to lower prices, while maintaining that strategic and structural management of both generating capacity and transmission "creates the conditions for the system to be more efficient". That is a softer claim than the one he made at the Festa do Pontal on 14 August, when he justified the acquisition partly by the need to "lower the price of the energy we consume at home". Several specialists have contested the idea that owning 13.7% of the grid operator will move retail electricity bills at all, and REN shares moved 0.29% on completion of a deal that had been priced in since August.

Montenegro Files Galp and Moeve Under Sovereignty, From the Floor of a Censure Debate

In the same exchange, Montenegro turned to Galp Energia, which is preparing an agreement to merge its Iberian refining and marketing assets with those of the Spanish group Moeve. The government, he said, "has been following the process from the first hour". It is "genuinely a domain of sovereignty, of strategic and energy security, and of the utmost gravity", and the executive "will take steps so that the country's strategic value can be safeguarded", without failing to "use all the margin the government has".

The language is a notch harder than what Lisbon has said before. In June the energy minister called the tie-up "complex"; in July the government drew two red lines around it, keep Sines open and supply Portugal first; in August a think tank urged ministers to shield the Sines refinery, which is the only one the country has. Saying out loud that you will use "all the margin the government has" is a step past drawing lines, and it was said on a day when Brent is within three dollars of 100 and diesel has just set an all-time record at Portuguese pumps. Galp closed up 1.79% and the market read the remark as politics rather than a threat to the deal.

Eight Parties Want Azores Airlines, and the Next Date Is 21 September

Eight expressions of interest reached SATA Holding by the deadline that closed today for the privatisation of Azores Airlines. That is exactly the number the group's chief executive, Tiago Santos, indicated to Jornal de Negócios back in May, which is either good forecasting or a well-canvassed process.

Bidders for a majority position, meaning at least 75%, had to file a fitness and compliance form, a declaration of financial capacity and a declaration of effective interest that binds them firmly to the process. SATA Holding will now check that documentation against the requirements set out in the tender specification, and those who clear it will be invited to submit non-binding offers by 21 September. Binding offers follow after that.

The clock behind all of this is Brussels, which gave SATA until the end of the year to dispose of Azores Airlines. The previous attempt collapsed down to a single candidate, the Atlantic Connect Group, and this one starts from eight. The airline itself is in better shape than the last time it was on the block: it trimmed its half-year loss to 37.1 million euros last week, though fuel prices alone took back 11.5 million of the improvement, and the 75% minimum stake and 30-month no-layoff cover have been in the specification since May. Eight interested parties with three weeks to produce a number is the healthiest this file has looked all year.

Hovione's Chairman Will Become Its Chief Executive, in April 2027

Hovione announced this morning that Stefan Doboczky will leave the chair of Hovione Holding AG to become chief executive of the group, with effect from 1 April 2027. He has chaired the board since 2024 and, in the company's words, played a central role in setting its strategy and vision; he will step down as chairman when he takes the executive job.

The appointment marks his return to pharmaceuticals after more than seventeen years at Royal DSM, where he reached the executive committee with responsibility for the group's global pharmaceutical portfolio and its growth in Asia. Guy Villax, non-executive director and president of the family council, speaking for the principal shareholder, said Doboczky's willingness to move from the board to executive leadership is "a strong signal of his confidence" in the company. The board also thanked Marco Gil and António Almeida, who have run Hovione as interim co-chief executives since Jean-Luc Herbeaux stepped down in May, and who will keep doing so for another seven months.

Hovione is unlisted, founded in Portugal more than six decades ago by Ivan and Diane Villax, and it runs four factories, in the United States, Portugal, Ireland and China, with development laboratories in Lisbon and New Jersey and more than 2,600 employees. Most of its output is exported and the United States is the main destination, which is the detail that matters as it pours 200 million euros into a new Seixal medicines factory due to open in 2027. A permanent chief executive arriving in April of that year will inherit the plant roughly as it starts up.

Bonds Rallied Everywhere and Portugal's Spread Widened Anyway

European government bonds recovered most of Monday's sell-off. The Portuguese ten-year yield eased three basis points to 3.71%, Germany's fell two to 3.36%, Spain's two to 3.80%, Italy's three to 4.19%, France's two to 4.23%, and Greece held at 4.04%. Portugal rallied harder than the Bund and its spread widened as a result, from about 33 basis points yesterday to about 35 today, because the German move was the smaller one. It is a distinction without much consequence at these levels: Portugal still prices 9 basis points inside Spain, 33 inside Greece, 48 inside Italy and 52 inside France.

The euro was effectively unchanged, the European Central Bank reference rate setting at 1.1614 dollars against 1.1622 on Monday, a move of seven hundredths of a percent. Euribor fixings published today are Monday's, and they were mixed rather than uniformly higher for the first time in a week: twelve months at 3.116%, six months 2.797%, three months 2.669%, one month 2.380% and one week 2.156%. The three-month fell a basis point from Friday while the one-month rose almost two, which is what a curve does when it stops believing its own front end. The ECB Governing Council meets in Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday, hosted by the Bundesbank, with the decision and press conference on Thursday, and a quarter-point rise is priced after euro-area inflation ran at 3.3% in August against 2.9% in July.

Also on the Tape: a Six Million Euro Health Round, and a French Buyer in the North

The health technology startup Hope Care closed a six million euro funding round with VDM Capital and existing shareholder Buenavista Equity Partners, earmarked for growth in France and Germany and for reinforcing its European operations. The French engineering group Artelia agreed to buy Sopsec, a consultancy based in the north of Portugal, adding another name to the steady flow of French acquisitions of Portuguese technical services firms. And industrial sales growth slowed in July, to 5.6%, according to the national statistics institute.

Wednesday

The treasury agency IGCP is scheduled to run three Obrigações do Tesouro (Treasury Bond) auctions at 10:30, with an indicative range of 1,500 to 1,750 million euros across lines maturing on 15 February 2030, 20 October 2034 and 15 June 2035, and today's rally means it goes to market a little cheaper than Monday's close implied. The ECB Governing Council starts its two days in Berlin, so Wednesday is a positioning session rather than a decision one. Watch whether Mota-Engil holds a gain built entirely on a pre-qualification, and whether crude finally puts a nine and two zeroes on the screen.