Portugal’s wealthiest family, the Amorims, has completed a full exit from banking after selling its remaining 32.8% stake in Banco Luso Brasileiro (BLB), a São Paulo-based lender, closing what had been decades of involvement in the financial sector. The group is now concentrating its holdings on two pillars: a strategic position in Portuguese energy major Galp Energia, in which Angola’s state oil company Sonangol is a co-shareholder, and a fast-expanding luxury tourism portfolio.
The Amorim group’s retreat from banking had been long in the making. Under the late patriarch Américo Amorim, the family had already divested from BPI, BCP, BNC, Banco Popular, BIC and Banco Único. By the time of his death, only two financial-sector positions remained: a sub-10% stake in Banco Carregosa — which the group has been trying to sell for several years — and an initial 33% holding in BLB. That final position has now also been disposed of.
The exit unfolded in two stages. Last year, the Grupo Américo Amorim sold 15.43 percentage points of its then 49.23% stake in BLB to Brazilian group Mônaco, cutting its holding to 32.8%. It has now sold that remaining interest in its entirety.
“The departure of Amorim Aliança B.V. from the shareholder structure was a decision taken by the shareholder itself, as part of its corporate strategy,” the BLB board stated in its report on the bank’s first-half performance. “In April 2026, the corporate reorganisation — approved by the Central Bank of Brazil (BACEN) — was completed, resulting in the concentration of control of the bank in RC Participações S.A., which became the sole controlling shareholder,” explained the board, led by Chief Executive Francisco Ribeiro.
As a result, the Grupo Américo Amorim sold its 32.8% to RC (Ruas e Cunha), which now holds 91.55% of BLB’s capital. K2CR Holding Financeira, linked to the Mônaco group, reduced its position to 6.9%, while the founding family of the institution retains just over 1.5%. Until April, when the Portuguese group exited, BLB’s board included Marta Amorim — the late Américo Amorim’s middle daughter — her brother-in-law Francisco Teixeira Rêgo (married to Luísa Amorim) and Jorge Seabra de Freitas, all senior figures within the Grupo Américo Amorim.
BLB was founded in 1988 by Manuel Rodrigues Tavares de Almeida, a native of Bocas do Vouga, in Aveiro, who emigrated to Brazil at the age of 18 and began his working life in his uncle’s bakery in São Paulo. Known as “Almeidão”, he went on to own a dozen bakeries, as well as bars, petrol stations and spirits brands including 3 Fazendas and Tatuzinho, among many other businesses. He died in September 2015, by which point the group was already being led by his son, who carries the same name. Today, the Tavares de Almeida family retains only a residual interest in BLB.
In the first 30 months of co-leadership between Américo Amorim and RC — both of which entered BLB in January 2012 with an initial stake of 33% each — the São Paulo-based lender accumulated losses of 106.2 million reais (approximately €18.1 million at current exchange rates). Since then, the bank has returned to profit, posting aggregate net earnings of 350 million reais (€59.8 million) over the past twelve years. Of that total, 10.9 million reais (€1.9 million) were generated in the first half of this year, a decline of 56.3% compared with the same period of 2025.
The BLB board attributed the earnings contraction primarily to higher provisioning for expected credit losses — concentrated in specific portfolio exposures — and to the non-recurrence of extraordinary non-operating gains recorded in the first half of 2025. The bank’s loan book, the main component of a balance sheet totalling 4.2 billion reais (€717 million), grew 11.8% from year-end to reach 3 billion reais (€512 million), driven chiefly by the transport segment, which is the bank’s core market.
Even as it exits banking entirely, the Amorim family is maintaining and reinforcing its exposure to the energy sector through its longstanding stake in Galp Energia. The holding company Amorim Energia BV — 55% controlled directly or indirectly by Américo Amorim’s estate, with the remaining 45% held by Esperaza, an offshore vehicle linked to Sonangol — owns a reference stake in the Portuguese oil and gas company. Paula Amorim, the eldest of the founder’s daughters, has chaired Galp’s board of directors since 2016, while Marta Amorim also serves on the board as a non-executive director.
The investment in Galp has proved particularly lucrative in recent years. Oil discoveries offshore Namibia, in the Mopane complex, triggered a sharp appreciation in Galp’s share price, directly benefiting the Amorim family’s net worth. More recently, Galp has advanced a series of high-profile strategic negotiations, including a partnership with TotalEnergies for the exploration of the same Namibian block, and talks with Spain’s Moeve (formerly Cepsa) on a potential merger of their refining, distribution and trading operations on the Iberian Peninsula — moves that Paula Amorim has described as part of a strategy to “create large European groups” through partnerships with “highly credible operators”.
The second major axis of the group’s strategic repositioning is luxury tourism, led principally by Paula Amorim and her husband Miguel Guedes de Sousa through Amorim Luxury — founded in 2005 and today operating a portfolio that spans fashion, food and beverage, hospitality and prestige real estate. Its assets include Fashion Clinic, one of Lisbon’s leading multi-brand luxury retailers on Avenida da Liberdade, and the JNcQUOI concept, which groups the five verbs “Eat, Drink, Shop, Live, Belong” under a single lifestyle brand.
The group is currently rebuilding JNcQUOI House, a 17-suite boutique hotel on Avenida da Liberdade that was destroyed by fire in June 2024, just weeks before its originally scheduled opening. The reconstruction investment stands at around ten million euros. That project is complementary to a resort already under development in Comporta, a coastal area south of Lisbon where Amorim Luxury has been building a significant presence over recent years. According to Miguel Guedes de Sousa, the couple’s stated ambition is nothing less than to “transform Portugal into Europe’s leading boutique destination” — a goal that represents a new generation’s continuation of the group’s long tradition in Portuguese tourism, which dates back to the creation of Amorim Turismo in 1997 and decades of partnerships with international operators including the French Accor group.
Taken together, these moves — a complete exit from banking, a deepened commitment to oil and gas through Galp, and an expansion of luxury tourism through Amorim Luxury — reflect a strategic repositioning that has been under way within the Portuguese family group for more than a decade. As the third and fourth generations of the Amorim family assume control, the patrimony is being concentrated in sectors deemed to offer higher added value and greater international growth potential, while the group distances itself from more traditional financial businesses that have become increasingly competitive and heavily regulated, such as retail banking.
Source: Mercado / Original article: https://mercado.co.ao/familia-amorim-a-mais-rica-de-portugal-sai-da-banca-e-reforca-apostas-no-petroleo-e-no-turismo-de-luxo/
