António Domingues, CGD’s chairman, did not have access to confidential information

  • ECO News
  • 24 November 2016

The Portuguese state secretary for the Treasury assures the meetings between Domingues and the heads of European authorities were only “conceptual”, discussing nothing but public information.

António Domingues did not have access to any confidential information while he was negotiating the terms for becoming the chairman of the Portuguese public bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD). Ricardo Mourinho Félix, state secretary for Treasury, assures this in statements made to Portuguese newspaper Público.

Mourinho Félix confirms, nonetheless, that he accompanied António Domingues while he was still an administrator for the Portuguese bank BPI to two meetings, one in Frankfurt and another in Brussels. Those meetings aimed to evaluate if Domingues’ terms for accepting being CGD’s chairman could be met, since they had to be approved by the European authorities.

Just yesterday, the European Commission had confirmed there was a meeting to discuss CGD’s recapitalization while António Domingues was still a part of BPI’s board. Answering a question from the MEP José Manuel Fernandes (from the Social Democratic Party – PSD), the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, said she was “contacted by the Portuguese authorities for the first time in April 2016”.

Now, Público discloses there was a meeting held prior to that, on March 24, with Daniele Nouy, chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB. That same newspaper says that on April 7 there was a meeting with the Directorate General for Competition.

In those meetings, as Mourinho Félix points out, Domingues guest, because the European authorities do not hold meetings with any chairperson from a bank.

Mourinho Félix told newspaper Público:

"I presented him as vice-chair of BPI, I said we had invited him to become CGD’s chairman – and that he was available. And that we wanted to know if there was any maneuver room to dismiss the ongoing plan at CGD, approving a new business plan without the help of the State; to accept a governance structure in which the State does not get involved in, assuring Caixa Geral de Depósitos would have a normal incentives’ system.”

State Secretary for the Treasury

And he guaranteed: “No confidential information was discussed. Nor could the shareholder have access to it, let alone on the data under bank secrecy. It was merely a conceptual discussion. And when the business plan was being worked on, it was done using public information, applying to the CGD the ratios used in BPI”.