Virgílio Lima to lead Montepio
Banker Virgílio Lima has won the elections to decide who will manage Montepio Geral Mutualist Association savings bank by 47.98%.
It means that 11,557 of the mutual association’s members voted for continuity until 2025 since Lima was already at the institution’s helm.
Virgílio Lima said that the “choice made by the members showed confidence in the leadership and the project and in the vision and ambition that we have presented”.
Essentially a cooperative building society, the Montepio Geral Mutualist Association (Associação Mutualista Montepio Geral (AMMG)) is the largest mutual organisation in Portugal, with 600,000 members and over €3Bn in savings.
There were four candidates vying for the leadership in the elections: Virgílio Lima (List A) with 11,557 votes, Pedro Corte Real (List B) with 2,434 votes, Eugénio Rosa (List C with 3,725 votes) and Pedro Alves (List D) with 5,861 votes.
However, Virgílio Lima admitted “the number of votes registered were far from corresponding with our expectations”.
He added “the election was affected by the pandemic and by the changes to the electoral process, although various ways of voting had been provided so that all the members would have the opportunity to vote.
Pedro Corte Real who was defeated, said “the big lesson that we drew from these results was the huge abstention rate (95%) which drastically reduced the legitimacy of the winner. The turnout for the ballot (5%), revealed the huge number of members who stayed away as a result of those who have been managing the institution over the past 20 years and, the authorities that were complacent in its management”.