António Domingues resigns

António Domingues has resigned from chairman of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) after weeks of stalling over wether or not he would hand in his patrimony and income declarations to the Constitutional Court (CC).

His resignation takes place just a few days from the deadline, December 9, in which those declarations had to be handed in to the CC. The news has already been confirmed by the ministry of Finance, stating they have accepted the resignation.

The Portuguese government was informed by CGD’s chairman of the Supervisory Board of the resignation of António Domingues, chairman of the Board of Directors. The resignation will take effect by the end of December. The ministry of Finance stated that very soon, for analysis by the Single Supervisory Mechanism, there will be someone designated to take on the duties of chairman, namely to continue with the business and recapitalization plans that have already been approved.

António Domingues handed in his notice after the government announced the recapitalization of CGD was postponed to 2017 – the injection of public capital was postponed in order to fully ascertain the impairments and register them in the 2016 accounts, as Ricardo Mourinho Félix, state secretary for the Treasury, stated a few days ago. The governor highlighted that, by then, “every institution has been notified of this process” – meaning, the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

Domingues is said to have felt offended by the approval of the new law, last Thursday, in which “members of the board of directors of credit institutions within the State’s business sector and qualified as ‘significant supervised entities’” are subject to the many articles of the Public Manager Statute and the law of 1983 – meaning both António Domingues and his team had to indeed hand in to the CC their income and patrimony declarations.