36,124 firms were formed between January and August, down 3% on last year, while real-estate insolvencies doubled and closures fell to a 12-month low.

By Beatriz Mota

Chart: Tugadaily · Data: Informa D&B Barometer

Warren Buffett, 96, becomes chairman emeritus with immediate effect and stays on the board. His eldest son, a director since 1993, takes the chair, while Greg Abel continues to run the company.

Warren Buffett stepped down on Friday as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the failing textile mill he bought in 1965 and turned into a trillion-dollar conglomerate. He is 96. The change took effect immediately. The board elected his eldest son, Howard G. Buffett, a director since 1993, as chairman, and named the father chairman emeritus. Warren Buffett remains a member of the board. In a letter to shareholders he wrote that Father Time always wins.

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Portugal's securities regulator cleared VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis to leave Euronext Lisbon on Thursday, with immediate effect. Visabeira Indústria must now buy the shares of holders who did not vote for the delisting, at €1.07 each, within three months.

Vista Alegre shares can no longer be bought or sold on the Lisbon exchange. The CMVM, Portugal's securities regulator, approved the delisting request from VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis, SGPS on Thursday, and the decision took effect immediately under article 251-F of the securities code. Nobody should be startled by it. The route was opened at the annual meeting on 29 May, where shareholders backed the exit at the request of Visabeira and a block of holders…

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Abanca Mar launched in Portugal on Thursday, lending to fishing, aquaculture, shipbuilding, ports, logistics, maritime tourism and offshore energy. It takes vessels as security and fronts public subsidies that have not yet landed.

A bank announcing that it lends to businesses is not news. A bank building a team that looks only at people who make their living from the sea says something about where it thinks the money is. Abanca launched Abanca Mar in Portugal on Thursday, a segment aimed at companies and sole traders in what gets called the blue economy. The definition is deliberately wide. It takes in fishing, aquaculture, seafood processing and trade, shipbuilding and the yards…

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In her State of the Union address, the Commission president announced a European alliance for climate risk insurance. Around 25% of catastrophe losses in the EU are covered by private insurance, and the rest lands on national budgets.

One line in Wednesday's State of the Union address will get less coverage than the headline items, and it is probably the one that touches household finances in Portugal most directly. Only about a quarter of losses from catastrophes in Europe are covered by private insurance. The rest ends up where it always ends up, on the national budget.

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ERSE is raising the energy tariff by €0.005 per kWh, about 2.7% on the average monthly bill. A couple with no children pay 95 cents more; a couple with two children pay €2.70 more. It covers 779,000 customers, and the regulator is passing on less than a third of the gap it found.

Electricity gets more expensive on 1 October for anyone still on Portugal's regulated tariff. ERSE is lifting the energy component by €0.005 per kWh, which works out at roughly 2.7% on the average monthly bill — and it is the percentage, not the amount, that will travel. The amount deserves an airing, because it changes how the number reads. The regulator's own statement works it through for two household types. A couple with no children, on 3.45 kVA and…

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Applications were due to open on Monday. The environment and energy minister put the delay at three or four weeks, and used a visit to Abrantes to confirm that part of the grid capacity at the old Pego coal plant is going to a technology free zone.

Monday was meant to be the day applications opened for 1,050 megavolt-amperes of electricity grid connection capacity, reserved for projects that include storage. They did not open. Maria da Graça Carvalho, the minister for environment and energy, explained the hold-up during a visit to the Tagusvalley science and technology park in Abrantes, and put it at three or four weeks. The reason is mundane, and in its way encouraging. Sixty-two submissions came…

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Friday's order sets the extraordinary ISP rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of diesel and 65.92 for petrol, in force from Monday. It is not a tax cut — it is the extra VAT the state collects when prices rise, given back.

Fill up this week and you are paying less tax than you were last week, by a wider margin than the headlines suggest. The order signed on Friday by the environment and energy minister and the secretary of state for tax affairs fixes the extraordinary fuel-duty rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of road diesel and 65.92 euros per thousand litres of unleaded petrol. In the unit that shows up on the pump display: 9.8 cents off diesel, 6.6 off petrol.

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The Dutch central bank has just moved close to ten billion dollars of gold out of the US, and Spain, Germany and Italy have started arguing about doing the same. Portugal moved its 3.7 tonnes in 2021 — and the reason it gave was not political.

The Dutch central bank has spent recent months moving gold. Around 60 tonnes physically travelled out of the United States and Canada, half to its own vaults and half to the Bank of England, and the rest was sold in North America and repurchased in London — the reserves change address without the bars being the same bars. Nearly 100 tonnes in total. The governor talked about "readiness" and preparing for "severe crises". Nobody in Amsterdam said the word…

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The resolution behind the 12-million-euro package caps the payment at 1,125 euros a hectare and ties it to the drop against each grower's five-year average. It also gives the Port wine institute until 31 December to design a fund that would make this kind of rescue unnecessary.

The Douro harvest is halfway through and some of the fruit has no buyer. The government's answer is an emergency package worth 12 million euros, agreed in the Council of Ministers on 4 September and published five days later. The part almost nobody has picked up is how it works, because it is unusual: the money follows the grapes that stay where they are. The resolution creating the scheme authorises the Douro and Port Wine Institute to spend up to 12…

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Portugal's energy regulator counted 46 tanker unloadings at the Sines LNG terminal in 2025, the entry point for 95% of the country's gas. The United States accounted for 43% of cargoes and Russia for 7%.

Portugal has an energy bottleneck and it sits in Sines. Around 95% of the gas that entered the country in 2025 arrived through the liquefied natural gas terminal there, according to the annual report from the energy regulator ERSE. The other 5% came by pipeline, over the Spanish interconnections at Campo Maior and Valença do Minho. The terminal closed the year on 46 tanker unloadings, seven fewer than in 2024, and filled 7,546 road tankers, 214 more than…

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The Ponta Delgada chamber of commerce has written to Portugal's competition authority. It says the cheapest fare classes are almost never on sale, even on searches made for August 2027.

The comparison São Miguel's business community has put on the table is awkward because it is internal. It does not set Azores Airlines against a rival. It sets Azores Airlines against itself. A flight from Praia, in Cape Verde, to Ponta Delgada takes close to four hours and, for comparable dates, costs around 218 euros. Lisbon to Ponta Delgada takes about two, and shows up as a return above 500. Same carrier, half the time in the air, more than double the…

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Volta launched on 10 April and has tripled in the last two months: 100 million at the three-month mark, 305 million at five. The system now averages about five million returns a day.

Portugal's deposit-return system for drinks containers went live on 10 April and, five months on, has taken back more than 305 million single-use bottles and cans. The curve says more than the total. Two months in, more than 10 million containers had come back. At three months, 100 million. At five, 305 million. The number tripled over the last two months, which is exactly how a scheme behaves when the habit takes a while to form and then forms all at…

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The deposit facility rate goes to 2.5% on 16 September, the second increase this year. What reaches your monthly payment is Euribor, and Euribor only reaches you on your contract's reset date.

The ECB Governing Council raised its three key rates by 25 basis points on Thursday, taking the deposit facility rate to 2.5% with effect from 16 September. It is the second rise this year, and energy is the reason. Inflation is still running above target, and the bank's own staff projections put it at an average of 3% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% only in 2028. Growth is projected at 0.9% this year, 1.4% next year and 1.5% in 2028. That is not a stall.…

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The Council of Ministers, meeting in Bragança, extended the coloured-diesel support for farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture to 31 December at an estimated cost above 15 million euros. The March decree being amended sets out the catch: the money is due only in weeks when the price beats a benchmark fixed in the first week of March.

Portugal's Council of Ministers met in Bragança on Wednesday and agreed to keep paying 10 cents a litre on coloured and marked diesel until 31 December. The Government says the scheme covers farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture, and that the extension will cost more than 15 million euros from the state budget. None of this is new. The support was created in March and expired on 30 June, which was the cut-off written into the original text. What…

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