Sonae boss says Portuguese companies have lost their ‘mojo’

The CEO of Portuguese company Sonae, Cláudia Azevedo, says that it is time to “stop demonising” company profits and warns that Portugal will only be able to compete internationally with strong businesses and financial literacy.

The business leader said that there had been many elections in Portugal and there are “many politicians that say (Portugal’s) companies are bad. But the companies pay dividends to their shareholders”, she said in a speech given on Friday at the annual CMVM securities market regulator conference ‘A New Ambition for the Capital Markets’.

Cláudia Azevedo said there was poor financial literacy in Portugal and a failure to value the role that companies have in economic development.

In a European context, in which the urgency of creating a true Capital Markets Union intersects with the challenge of making investment accessible and attractive to all, Cláudia Azevedo argued that “companies are good for society: they grow, hire people, pay taxes, and that is what finances the public sector”.

The Sonae CEO said that Portuguese companies needed to rediscover their ‘mojo’ while society and politicians had to stop looking at profits and dividends “as a cardinal sin, but rather a driver for social and economic growth.”

Cláudia Azevedo also stressed that financial literacy cannot be seen as a prerequisite for innovation in investment products, but rather as a process that takes place simultaneously. “I am a big advocate of doing everything at the same time, otherwise we do nothing,” she said.