Mayor admits crisis could undermine investor confidence

Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas admitted on Tuesday that the political crisis currently engulfing the government could undermine investor confidence in Portugal.

“What we’re going through will affect investors, but I will be here to bring stability and serenity to investors, and tell them that Lisbon is a safe harbour, which it has always been since it was founded,” he said.
“I will always be here as an ambassador for investors, while protecting the most vulnerable”, he added while visiting Web Summit after having cancelled a press conference that had been scheduled for this afternoon (Wed, 15 Nov).
“We have to have social, economic and political suability, and obviously what has been going on in Portugal is very serious, and we have to face up to it. And how should the Mayor of Lisbon react? By working every day for this stability,” he said.
“Many business owners have asked me about the consequences of the crisis. I say that in Lisbon there are no consequences. Lisbon is stable, we are working for people to have confidence.”
“The Unicorn Factory, the project that no-one believed in, has created over 10,000 jobs in two years. The Web Summit is a very important project for the city, and everything we’ve done over the past two years has been extremely valuable for the country”, added he mayor.
“We are talking about big technology companies who have come to Lisbon, and this is very important for the project that we are doing and particularly for the city”, he said.
“When we’re talking about Web Summit, we are talking about job creation. We are referring to 12 unicorns that have come and set up in Lisbon, and companies that have come here to generate jobs.
“We recently launched the 12th unicorn in our city, a company that started with just five people, and now employs140 and will take on an extra 150, and this is what Web Summit is all about”, he said.
The Unicorn Factory has to date supported over 200 startups and scale-ups, three times more than when the project was launched in 2022.