[CrLf]

Just a note that Portugal Telecom wasn't state owned anymore when those deals happened.

The privately-owned PT was looking for places where to invest the money they got from selling their previous position in brazilian Vivo to Telefonica (a sale they tried to avoid once before but couldn't avoid the second time around due to the amount involved) and were then pressured by the government to reinvest also in Brazil, which they did by buying the heavily-indebted Oi.

[ptsneves]

Great tidbit!

It was not state owned but from my point of view there is a consensus that decisions were made through state channels, namely dealings with Banco Espirito Santo(BES) by the ex-PM.

Those issues are now the subject of a long dragging criminal proceedings to the then prime minister as well as ex-BES leader. Corruption and shady dealing at the highest level. Also note that BES collapsed under likely criminal activities. BES was the biggest, portuguese-owned bank at the time, with an outsize influence on the portuguese speaking finance world.

As can be seen Portugal suffered severe setbacks on it's influence in the 2008 crisis. It lost tech capabilities, financial capabilities and in my opinion will have a long way in the desert, if it ever comes out. Dreadful demographics and one of the lowest population education levels in EU or OECD mean that relationships with Brasil and other under-developed Portuguese speaking countries are one of the few possible lifelines left. Amazingly Portugal's diplomacy is still (ostensively) effective, with Portuguese nationals occupying relevant positions: current UN secretary general, and Durão Barroso as an ex- EU Commission President.

Jair Bolsonaro is a type of politician that would be completely shunned by the political establishment. That does not stop the portuguese president from saying platitudes about him. Therefore if Bolsonaro asks for the heart of a dead king for nationalistic purposes, we oblige and make a nice ceremony about it. Kissing hand and ambivalence on values are our core values.

[CrLf]

Up until the first attempt from Telefonica to buy PT’s share in Vivo, the government did have direct influence via a “golden share” left over from privatization. IIRC they (threatened to) use it to help PT’s management block the deal against the wishes of some shareholders (BES was one, I think). The golden share was already under scrutiny by EU regulators and was forfeited afterwards.

(There was a similar conflict some time before, when Sonae tried to buy PT outright, and I may be mixing up some of the details.)

The BES group bankruptcy is related to the later woes, but only incidentally. The charges against the ex-PM are, AFAIK, unrelated to any of this.

PT loaned 900M€ to BES Group which subsequently went bankrupt. PT had yearly profits of 700M€ so this wouldn’t be fatal. But they had to get a loan from its subsidiary Oi to meet cash flow and that shifted the balance of power. Suddenly, the tables had turned Oi owned PT.

Given Oi’s massive debt (15B€ IIRC), they proceeded to sell PT to Altice for 7B€, they raged through the company like a bull in a china shop, and the rest is history.