Portugal Telecom’s big cheese, Henrique Granadeiro, no longer will part on the board of directors of CorpCo, the new company created as a result of the merger between PT and the Brazilian telecoms company Oi.
In a statement sent to the Brazilian regulator, Oi simply stated that it was progressing towards the final stages of the merger and corporate reorganisation, and listed the directors of the new company – Grandeiro was not on the list.
The CorpCo board will consist of five members batting for the Portuguese side, António Gomes Mota, Paulo José Lopes Varela, Rafael Mora, Rui Horta e Costa and Vítor da Conceição Gonçalves.
The Brazilian team is fielding six directors, Fernando Magalhães Portella, Fernando Marques dos Santos, José Mauro Mettrau Carneiro da Cunha, Renato Torres de Faria, Sérgio Franklin Quintella and Thomas C. Azevedo Reichenheim.
PT’s Executive President, Henrique Granadeiro, and Nuno Vasconcellos from Ongoing who also was on the original list, both have been dropped from the lineup presented to Portugal’s Securities Commission last autumn.
Grandeiro’s humiliation at being dropped is well justified as Portugal Telecom, for reasons best known to a select few, well-connected directors, decided to invest 40% of PT’s liquid assets in a corporate bond issued by the insolvent Rioforte subsidiary of the Espírito Santo Group. Both Espírito Santo companies since have run for the legal protection offered by the Luxembourg legal system.
Grandeiro has not yet explained how €900 million was spent by PT on a Rioforte corporate bond which has not been repaid two weeks after it should have been.
Espírito Santo Group is the largest shareholder in PT, and the suggestion is that the struggling banking group needed a €900 million liquidity favour.
If this scurrulous allegation should prove to be true then the good name of Espírito Santo’s Ricardo Salgado and PT’s Henrique Granadeiro will be called into question.
Rioforte of course could not come up with the money when it was due and it switched the bond to a complicated 6 year loan, not quite what PT was expecting, but with its corporate trousers around its ankles, at least PT conceded that Grandeiro would not be a suitable director for the newly merged CorpCo.
If Grandeiro takes his financial, moral and leadership role as PT Executive President seriously, he now should resign.
