Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Ends Flat, Galp Rebounds, Chinese BPG Deal Collapses

Market Wrap: Lisbon Closes Friday Flat as Galp Cancels Out the Wind Names

Lisbon rounded off the week almost exactly where it started the day. The PSI index (Portuguese Stock Index) closed Friday at 9,254.52 points, a gain of barely 0.05 points — statistically flat, and all but unchanged from Thursday's 9,254.47 finish. Beneath that becalmed headline, though, the tape was livelier than the number suggests: the benchmark swung through a 9,219.26–9,277.39 band during the session before the two heaviest energy names pulled in opposite directions and, between them, cancelled the day out. A strong rebound in Galp Energia offset a sharp fall in the wind-power group EDP Renováveis, leaving the index to close the week with a modest single-digit weekly move and still carrying a gain of roughly 10% for 2026 as a whole.

The Movers: Galp Rebounds With Oil, EDP Renováveis the Weak Spot

The standout was Galp Energia, the integrated oil-and-gas major, which climbed 1.71% to €20.81 to lead the blue chips as crude prices steadied — a mirror image of the 3%-plus drop the stock suffered earlier in the week when oil was sliding. The telecoms group NOS added 1.00% to €4.848, the paper-and-cement holding company Semapa rose 0.50% to €20.30, and the pulp producer Altri edged up 0.42% to €4.75, with the retailer Sonae (+0.25%) and the builder Mota-Engil (+0.18%) also finishing in the green.

The clear laggard was EDP Renováveis (EDP Renewables), the renewables arm of the EDP group, which slid 1.81% to €13.59 — comfortably the weakest blue chip — as investors kept trimming exposure to the wind-and-solar names. Its parent, EDP (Energias de Portugal), eased 0.22% to €4.545, while the postal operator CTT — Correios de Portugal (Portugal Post) fell 0.55% to €6.315, the construction minnow Teixeira Duarte lost 0.51%, and the grid operator REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais — National Energy Networks) slipped 0.28% to €3.54. Portugal's largest listed bank, Banco Comercial Português (BCP), closed dead flat at €1.096, as did the cork group Corticeira Amorim at €6.76, while the food retailer Jerónimo Martins barely moved, up 0.06% to €17.21.

Business & Tech Focus: A Chinese Bank Deal Falls Through, and Sines Prepares Its Big Terminal Tender

The week's most telling corporate story was a deal that came undone. The Hong Kong-listed fintech group VCredit has walked away from its planned takeover of Banco Português de Gestão (BPG — Portuguese Management Bank), the small lender owned by the Fundação Oriente (Orient Foundation), after the acquisition failed to clear its final regulatory hurdle. VCredit had agreed to pay the value of BPG's equity — above €18 million at the end of last year — in a transaction that could have risen to as much as €35 million, and had eyed the bank as a ready-made gateway into the European market. But with the required regulatory condition still unmet by 6 August, the two sides agreed to terminate the contract. The sting is in the deposit: of the €1 million VCredit had paid up front, the Fundação Oriente will keep 80% — €800,000 — as compensation for the months spent holding the bank open and turning away other suitors, returning just €200,000 (20%) to the Chinese buyer. Both parties stressed there had been no breach; the collapse is a reminder that, for all Portugal's openness to foreign capital, banking deals still live or die on the supervisor's sign-off.

Down the coast, a far larger prize is edging toward the market. The Administração dos Portos de Sines e do Algarve (APS — Sines and Algarve Ports Authority) expects to receive, by the end of this month, the market study that will set the rules for the concession of the future Vasco da Gama container terminal at Sines — a project the government already has on its desk. The terminal is budgeted at around €700 million and would add between three and 3.5 million tonnes of annual capacity at Portugal's deep-water Atlantic gateway. The stakes, and the risks, are equally clear: a 2019 attempt drew some 60 companies to collect the tender documents but not a single binding bid, deterred by the sheer scale of the investment, and this time the competition includes fast-growing Moroccan ports such as Tanger Med and Nador, plus looming EU environmental shipping charges that could add as much as €400,000 per vessel calling at European quays — costs a Moroccan berth would avoid.

Elsewhere on the tape, the telecoms holding company Pharol said it had received €5.1 million after signing an addendum to its long-running agreement with the Brazilian operator Oi, adding that the payment relates to tax contingencies and does not affect its own results — a modest but welcome trickle from a saga that has dragged on for years.

Bonds and the Euro

The macro backdrop was firmer than the flat equity close implied. Portugal's 10-year Obrigações do Tesouro (Treasury bonds) yielded around 3.55%, up roughly eight basis points on the day, part of a broad eurozone bond sell-off that also lifted the benchmark German 10-year Bund to about 3.21% — leaving the spread Lisbon pays over Berlin in the mid-30-basis-point range, still a historically slim premium that continues to reward Portugal's run of budget surpluses and shrinking debt. The euro, by contrast, had a clearly stronger day: EUR/USD rose about 0.4% to trade near $1.158, its firmest in weeks, as the dollar softened ahead of the next round of United States inflation data — a move that eases import bills but nibbles at the competitiveness of Portugal's exporters and its dollar-earning tourism trade.

The Week Ahead

With the domestic diary quiet through the weekend, Lisbon reopens on Monday still taking its cue from abroad — from the direction of crude, which will decide whether Galp's rebound has legs, and from United States inflation figures that are steering both the euro and the bond market. Closer to home, the two corporate threads to watch are the countdown to the Sines terminal tender, where the market study due this month will show how ambitious the government is willing to be, and the continuing question of who ends up owning Portugal's smaller banks now that one foreign suitor has just walked away. After a week that ended precisely where it began, the next catalyst is more likely to come from the deal table than from the trading screen.