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Portugal
Portuguese paper merchant Inapa – Investimentos, Participações e Gestão, S.A. (Inapa IPG) said that it would present the company to insolvency under Portuguese law after its German subsidiary filed for insolvency on 22 July 2024, EUWID-Paper.com reported. The German subsidiary Inapa Deutschland had a short-term cash shortage of €12m, for which no financing solution was found within the period established in accordance with German law, the company explained in a statement.
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Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Medina urged the European Central Bank to start lowering borrowing costs, saying maintaining them at their current level is a “high risk,” Bloomberg News reported. “Various European countries are having a very strong slowdown,” Medina said in an interview in Sao Paulo on Thursday. “In some there’s already stagnation and recession. At this moment, the risks of leaving the situation as it is are greater than starting a process of reducing interest rates.
Portugal's government has mandated state holding company Parpublica to pick two independent assessors to value airline TAP ahead of its privatisation, which could be launched in July, the finance minister said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The state owns 100% of TAP, which is currently restructuring under a Brussels-approved 3.2 billion euro ($3.5 billion) rescue plan, and the government is considering an outright or partial sale. "These two independent assessments are mandatory before launching the privatisation.
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A month after being dismissed on live television as chief executive officer of Portuguese airline TAP SA, Christine Ourmieres-Widener remains at the helm of the state-owned carrier, without any guidance from the government on how to run the company, Bloomberg reported. Portugal’s Finance Minister Fernando Medina sacked Ourmieres-Widener at a March 6 press conference broadcast on national television, following criticism about a severance payment of €500,000 ($547,000) to a departing executive board member.
The successful completion in December of Novo Banco's restructuring means Portugal's fourth-largest lender will no longer request funds from the country's Resolution Fund or the state, the finance ministry said on Monday, Reuters reported. The European Commission had agreed that the process involving the bank that emerged from the ashes of the collapsed Banco Espirito Santo in 2014 was over, a ministry statement said.
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Portugal provided São Tomé and Príncipe with €15 million in direct support towards the country’s budget in order to “meet immediate needs,” announced minister of foreign affairs João Gomes Cravinho last Friday, the Portugal Resident reported. The funding was done through the Camões cooperation and language institute. “This amount of €15 million is to meet immediate cash-flow needs.
The Bam Bam Beach Bitcoin bar, on an uncrowded beach in southwestern Portugal, is a bar and community of about 150 crypto supporters around the town of Lagos that are a bubble of optimism amid what has become known as the “crypto winter,” the New York Times reported. This summer, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether melted down, and crypto companies like the experimental bank Celsius Network declared bankruptcy as fears over the global economy yanked down values of the risky assets. Thousands of investors were hurt by the crash.
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The impact of a euro-zone interest-rate hike would be quickly felt by Portuguese companies and families, according to the country’s central bank governor, Bloomberg News reported. “The structure of credit in Portugal is dominated by variable interest rates, so transmission of interest rates to funding costs, both for households and firms, will be very fast,” Mario Centeno, a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said in an interview in Lisbon on Monday. “So we need to be prepared for that.” Centeno also said that Portugal has a “very low” exposure to Russia.
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Portugal will allow students to return to school from this week and nightclubs to reopen on Jan. 14 despite a record surge in COVID-19 cases, with hospital admissions still well below levels seen earlier in the pandemic, Reuters reported. "It is evident that the Omicron variant is less severe ... vaccination has been effective against it," Prime Minister Antonio Costa told a news conference, referring to the fast-spreading variant that emerged in late 2021.
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