Mutares ponders mass redundancies in EFACEC company shakeup

The Portuguese transport and electrical systems company EFACEC is to close down business areas that are not profitable and consider mass redundancies.

The company was sold by the government in 2023 for an undisclosed sum to the German asset management and equity fund Mutares, which on Thursday held a Teams meeting in English on the company’s restructuring plan involving the merging of some areas within the company, and possible collective redundancies.

In a profound company shakeup, Efacec will now concentrate on more profitable areas such as electric mobility, automation, and transformers according to newspaper Expresso on Friday.

In terms of divestment, Mutares is looking at batteries, with the aggregation of other business areas such as transformers and systems.

All operations, including subsidiaries, are to be restructured. Mutares expects to present the results of this restructuring plan this year, which will include cost-cutting to rebalance the books and put the company on the road to recovery.

Efacec was nationalised in 2020 with the promise of being sold that year, but the company’s financial problems and links to previous shareholder Isabel dos Santos, the Angolan heiress who has an international arrest warrant against her for syphoning millions of dollars from Angolan State oil company Sonangol in 2020, dragged its reputation down, making it difficult to find a realistic buyer.