Markets, Business & Tech Briefing: PSI Renews Its April High, Six Capitals Push a Windfall Tax, Savings Certificates Cap Out

Lisbon Renews Its April High on One Very Large Grocer

The PSI (Portuguese Stock Index) closed Monday, 24 August, at 9,391.96 points, up 0.40% and at its highest finish since April. It was the third consecutive session of gains, and it came on a day when most of Europe went the other way: Frankfurt, Paris and Milan all slipped, though none by more than 0.4%, and only Madrid's IBEX, up almost 0.7%, beat Lisbon.

The move was narrow in the way small markets often are. Twelve of the index's sixteen members rose, one was unchanged and three fell, but the day belonged to Jerónimo Martins, which added 3.08% to €18.08 and, as the index's heaviest consumer name, carried most of the advance on its own. That is the second outsized session in a row for the owner of Pingo Doce, after a 3.24% jump on Friday, and it has now travelled from about €16.99 to €18.08 in two trading days without a company announcement to explain it. Moves of that size with nothing on the wire are usually repositioning rather than re-rating, and they are worth watching precisely because they can unwind as quickly as they arrive. The group is still working through the closure of about 200 Ara stores in Colombia after this month's earthquake, which makes the enthusiasm harder to read, not easier.

Behind it, the gains were modest and broad: Ibersol up 1.1% to €10.10, CTT up 1.01% to €6.47, BCP, or Banco Comercial Português, up 1.0% to €1.1085, EDP up 0.39% to €4.636 and EDP Renováveis (EDP Renewables) up 0.22% to €13.50. Corticeira Amorim, the cork group, finished flat at €6.99.

The one substantial loser was Galp Energia, down 2.28% to €21.43, and the reason sat outside Lisbon entirely. Crude gave back part of two consecutive weekly gains as traders waited on the detail of new United States sanctions against Iran: Brent, the European benchmark, fell about 1.1% to $93.38 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate dropped 1.6% to $85.64, according to Reuters data. Mota-Engil, the builder, eased 0.31% to €4.504 and REN, or Redes Energéticas Nacionais (National Energy Networks), slipped 0.28% to €3.54.

Read plainly, Lisbon is now three sessions into a run built on rotation rather than news, with the energy complex handing leadership to the consumer names and an index sitting about 1.3% below its 52-week peak of 9,516.43.

Six Finance Ministers Ask Dublin to Put an Energy Windfall Tax Back on the Table

Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, Portugal's finance minister, has co-signed a letter to the Irish rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union asking for a coordinated European mechanism to tax the extraordinary profits of energy companies. His counterparts from Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Austria signed alongside him, and the six want the item put on the agenda of the ECOFIN meeting in Dublin on 18 and 19 September.

The argument in the letter is that national measures have not durably reduced or even stabilised energy prices for households and businesses, and that a common approach is needed so that those profiting from the crisis contribute to easing the burden. The specific target is the profit multinational oil companies earn abroad, which a purely domestic levy cannot reach. The ministers also asked Brussels to speed up the results of its ongoing inquiry into refining margins.

This is the fourth time this year Portugal has put its name to a push of this kind, after a four-country demand in early April and a broader co-signed call a week later, and the pattern tells you something about why it keeps coming back. In April the European Commission's answer was to confirm that member states may impose windfall taxes on energy companies individually, which pushed the decision back to national capitals. Portugal then took that route in late July, approving a temporary 33% levy on oil company profits above their two-year historical average, a bill that still awaits its parliamentary debate now that the recess is ending.

The problem with the national route is exactly the one the letter names. A levy written in Lisbon reaches the Portuguese profit of a group whose earnings are global, and it does so while the same group is negotiating on the domestic front over whether fuel margins should be capped at all. Six finance ministries asking for a shared instrument is an admission that six separate instruments have not worked. Whether Dublin gives it agenda time in three weeks is the first test.

Euribor's Climb Pushes Savings Certificates Into Their Legal Ceiling

The three-month Euribor has now spent ten days above 2.5%, closing Friday at 2.524%, its highest reading in nearly two years. It rose again on Monday, as did the six-month rate, while the twelve-month rate fell.

For savers, that has a precise and slightly anticlimactic consequence. The base rate on Certificados de Aforro (Savings Certificates) Série F is set from the average of the three-month Euribor over a ten-day window, and the window that governs September subscriptions closes on Thursday. On the arithmetic as it stands, subscriptions made next month will carry a base rate of 2.5%, which is not merely a high number but the highest the law allows. The base component is capped there, so further increases in Euribor will no longer feed through.

That is a milestone of sorts. The base rate has climbed month after month this year, from 2.195% for May to 2.356% for July and 2.474% for August, and September is where that particular escalator stops. What remains is the loyalty premium, which runs from 0.25% to 1.75% depending on how long the money stays put across the product's fifteen-year life, so a saver who holds on still improves their return over time; they simply no longer benefit from the rate cycle.

The practical read for households sitting on cash is that the state's retail savings product has reached the top of its range at the same moment the European Central Bank is expected to raise rates again in September. From here, any further tightening flows to bank deposits and to mortgage bills, but not to the certificates. Anyone who was waiting for a better month has now had it: it is this one, and the ceiling is why. It also comes after the IGCP lifted the €5,000 online subscription ceiling in July, which makes a single large September purchase considerably easier to execute than it would have been three months ago.

Fidelidade Picks Up a French Construction Book That QBE Is Walking Away From

APRIL Construction, the French broker, has added Fidelidade France to its panel of carriers for décennale cover, the compulsory ten-year structural liability insurance that every French builder must hold. The agreement, announced on 20 August, replaces QBE, which is leaving the French construction market progressively and will be out by 31 December 2026 after a long partnership with the broker. From 1 January 2027, the whole of APRIL's affected portfolio will receive subscription offers from Fidelidade, aimed at construction firms with annual turnover up to €10 million and covering everything from structural work to specialist finishing trades. Contractual tariff conditions carry over unchanged, so clients are not repriced on the way across. Fidelidade joins ERGO, the CAM group and AXERIA on the panel.

What makes this more interesting than a routine broker reshuffle is what QBE is walking away from. French construction insurance wrote €3.177 billion of premiums in 2024, of which décennale accounted for 74%, or €2.34 billion, and the segment posted a combined ratio of 130% and a technical loss of €827 million, the worst result on record. In other words, the market Fidelidade is entering is one where the incumbent has concluded it cannot make money.

That is a defensible bet if you think pricing is about to turn, and Portugal's largest insurer is not short of reasons to want European scale: Fosun's Fidelidade has been lining up a 35% share sale to force its way into the PSI in 2027, and an international growth story is exactly what that book needs. It is also a reminder that underwriting cycles do not respect borders. The same company is writing into a French loss-making line in the same month that Portugal's own regulator reported home and fire claims running at 123% of premiums after one winter of storms.

Bonds, the Euro, and What the Pump Should Charge This Week

Portuguese debt sold off at the short end on Monday, with yields rising at two and five years while the ten-year held broadly where it ended last week, a shade above 3.6%. That shape is consistent with a market pricing another European Central Bank move in September rather than worrying about Portugal specifically; the country's spread over the German ten-year Bund has been sitting near its narrowest ever, and nothing on Monday disturbed it.

The euro was steady rather than spectacular. The ECB's daily reference rate fixed at $1.1664, a touch below Friday's close but still among the firmest readings since June, with sterling at £0.8555 and the yen at ¥185.60.

Drivers get a smaller piece of arithmetic than they did a week ago. ERSE, the Entidade Reguladora dos Serviços Energéticos (Energy Services Regulatory Authority), put its efficient price for the week of 24 to 30 August at €2.021 a litre for 95-octane petrol and €2.115 for diesel, up 1.9% and 1.1% respectively on international quotations. Before tax those same litres cost €1.041 and €1.274, which is the clearest illustration available of how much of a Portuguese fuel bill is ISP, the carbon component and VAT rather than the fuel itself. The efficient price is a reference, not a cap: stations set their own. It lands the same week that the extraordinary ISP rebate widened again, which is the state absorbing part of a rise it did not cause.

Tomorrow

The domestic calendar on Tuesday, 25 August, is empty, so Lisbon will again take its cue from crude and from Washington's Iran sanctions package, which is the single input most likely to move Galp in either direction. The other thing to watch is closer to home and quieter: whether Jerónimo Martins can hold €18.08 after two sessions of gains that no company announcement supports. Our best guess is a flat to slightly softer open, with the index consolidating an April high rather than pressing toward 9,500.