Starting from the end, until the end of September 2023, I was at BNP Paribas, where I concluded my professional services career in investment banking, mainly focusing on M&A services in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. During my 15 years at BNP Paribas, I had the privilege of participating in numerous transactions, working with many clients, always from a strategic perspective – that is, transactions that were truly transformational for clients, whether they involved mergers and acquisitions or capital markets.

I spent just under three years at Banco Santander, split between Lisbon and Madrid, which was the reason I left Portugal in 2007. Before that, I worked for four years at Kearney in strategic consulting, where I started my career, and then for two years at Explorer Investments. A curious fact is that I was the “first employee” after the founding partners at Explorer, the first analyst on the Private Equity team.

Except for the two years at Explorer Investments, almost my entire career has been dedicated to professional services. I was very focused on the national market, especially since 2016, when I returned from London to Madrid. I was involved in numerous transactions for Portuguese clients, such as EDP, Sonae, Greenvolt, Galp, Iberwind, and public entities like Banco de Portugal and Parpública. Throughout these years, I maintained strong ties with Portuguese companies and the Portuguese economy.

I was always very close to the team and team management, as well as the bank’s management team. Shortly after joining BNP Paribas, I was given responsibility for staffing the Iberian junior team in Madrid. I had to ensure that people were assigned to the most suitable projects based on their skills, development needs, and the requirements of clients and projects. Between 2011 and 2016, I was in London, where I built and managed a junior team from across Europe, alongside a colleague based in Paris. It was a stimulating and enriching experience. Even during those years, I maintained close and continuous relationships with clients and transactions.

My connection with Ricardo Pires, our CEO, goes back many years, as we occasionally met professionally. At the beginning of 2023, he proposed discussing the work he was developing at Semapa. He wanted my perspective as a banker, someone who had followed the Group’s evolution and its companies for many years, but also someone with a more strategic mindset than just investment banking.

It was easy to connect the dots and realize that the Semapa project was incredibly interesting and exciting for me. At BNP Paribas, I was doing things I enjoyed, working with fascinating clients, and sometimes even changing the course of the companies we worked with. So, when this big challenge arose, I wasn’t considering returning to Portugal; I was very content at BNP Paribas. It’s like a game of Tetris—pieces start falling into place, and before you know it, you have a puzzle fully assembled in front of you.

Talent and investment are the two guiding principles at Semapa. There was a need to create and strengthen the investment strategy and build a team dedicated to this goal. What excited me was that it was an investment project focused on growth. Adding to this were two factors I consider essential: human quality and the fact that it’s an industrial project—two things that matter a lot to me. This made the decision very easy. If Ricardo Pires hadn’t shared the project with me or challenged me to consider the opportunity, my trajectory would have been different.

It’s true that this challenge involved returning to Portugal, which wasn’t part of our family’s medium-term plans, as I mentioned. It wasn’t something we had planned, but we felt it was a fantastic opportunity because it aligned with my interests and the skills I had developed in the financial world. It also presented an opportunity to think strategically about businesses and the Group. From a broader family perspective, it also made sense, as it anticipated something we would have wanted to happen eventually, even if we didn’t know whether it would be in the near or distant future.

The simplest way to describe it is to invest and continue investing within the Semapa Group. By this, I mean investments not only in new subsidiaries but also alongside existing ones, with their teams leading the way and supported by the holding company. The goal is to make the Group increasingly diversified, sustainable, and globally oriented in the long term, with more growth pillars.

When I say “sustainable,” I also mean it in the traditional sense—that the Group’s economics are sustainable over time. This inherently means that the Group must have an environmental, social, and talent sustainability component. Employees should feel satisfied, finances should be stable, and there should be a predictable pattern without significant fluctuations. Additionally, businesses shouldn’t rely solely on cyclical or highly volatile sectors. Pulp and paper, as well as cement, are naturally cyclical businesses. Hence, continuing to invest to diversify the Group’s financial profile is essential. The goal is to create a diversified, sustainable, growth-oriented, and positively impactful Group from environmental, social, and economic perspectives.

Talent is probably the most important resource, the key to everything. This includes not only the internal team but also those we involve in making investment decisions. This means the people already at Semapa, both on the executive team and the analysis teams, as well as those within the Group’s companies who can provide valuable insights when analyzing investment opportunities. They can give us perspectives on the market, industrial components, clients, suppliers, and production processes, which can be incredibly helpful. It’s like having many in-house consultants who can support us in key areas for our investment vectors. For me, talent applied to investment is the key.

Another key factor is origination—the ability to attract investment opportunities or have them come to us. Building and maintaining relationships with entrepreneurs, other economic agents, and advisors is crucial. And, of course, capital is important. But in this regard, the Group is in a very strong position.

The core of the investment team has already been established with Gonzalo Durán, who worked at Credit Suisse in Madrid and brings over 10 years of experience in M&A and investment banking, with significant transactions in various sectors, especially Energy. Francisco Castanho, from BNP Paribas in Paris, also joined the team with around five years of experience in M&A and sectors like Telecom and Industry. The project Semapa has ahead allowed us to attract talent with relevant international experience, which is essential for delivering on this ambition of investment and growth, not just in Portugal but also across Europe. In addition to Gonzalo and Francisco, we will also bring in some more junior profiles to complete the team.

At Semapa, professionals are accustomed to investment processes at the executive, analytical, and board levels. Thus, one of the very short-term goals is to consolidate the team in terms of processes and ensure that Semapa is recognized as a key investor for enabling transactions involving medium-sized companies on an Iberian and European scale. Achieving exposure for Semapa’s growth beyond Portugal is a goal. Once our local role is firmly established, the big challenge will be establishing ourselves in Western Europe at the appropriate scale, which will come later. Transactions like the Triangle’s deal in 2023 validate our profile as an active investor seeking international growth.

Above all, we can offer accumulated, diverse experience from working with numerous companies at critical stages of their strategic development. When someone encounters a situation they’ve seen multiple times, even if they don’t have an immediate solution, they often have the tools to navigate toward one. The method or process involved could be negotiation, evaluation, or analysis. While the context might seem “new,” we likely have the reflexes and mental agility to reach a solution. This comes from the accumulated experience of handling many situations, often within a specific line of work but in vastly different contexts, cultural environments, and companies of various sizes.

It’s a very exciting challenge, and these early days at Semapa have only reinforced the enthusiasm with which we accepted this invitation. I have a team that, like me, believes in the Group’s enormous potential and is determined to develop it within the values of simplicity, proximity, and empowerment.