[ad_1]
Her name is Margarida Matos Rosa, an economist by training. He became president of the Competition Authority (AdC) in late 2016.
The figures speak for themselves: 73% of all fines imposed since the creation of that body in 2004 have their “signature”. This Thursday, the largest fine in history was imposed on a single company. Meo was fined 84 million euros for allegedly combining prices with Nowo, the operator was saved from the financial penalty, as he claimed to be “sorry”.
He is only 47 years old. She has a degree in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain (magna cum laude), in Belgium, and an MPA (Master of Public Affairs) from Princeton University (United States of America). In 2007, he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a Fulbright scholarship, having researched public policy in the private equity sector. Within the Technological Plan Unit, it contributed to the development of alliances between MIT and Portuguese university institutions, in areas with a strong technological component.
AdC, under the leadership of Margarida Matos Rosa since November 28, 2016, does not seem to be afraid of big companies. The start of 2020 has been brilliant. This Thursday it imposed a fine of 84 million euros on Meo for combining prices and sharing markets with the operator Nowo in mobile and fixed communications services. A cartel has never been detected in the telecommunications sector, another achievement by the economist. The Portuguese Association of Advertising Agencies had been fined 3.6 million in October. In March, five railway companies were fined 3.4 million. In total, 91 million euros in fines in 2020 alone.
Margarida Matos Rosa achieved the feat of applying, during her presidency, 73% of the total accumulated fines of the institution. More than 494 million euros in fines are his responsibility. The AdC has applied 674.3 million euros in economic sanctions to companies in various sectors since 2004, that is, since its creation. The only less positive aspect, whose responsibility it shares with its predecessors, is that only 2.7% of the fines were actually paid by the violators, at least until the end of last year.
Before joining the AdC, Margarida Matos Rosa headed the Department of Supervision of Collective Investment Management of the Securities Market Commission (CMVM). Between 2009 and 2011, she had been an advisor to the Board of the same entity for regulatory and supervisory issues in the European and international financial markets. He was also responsible for the development of the institutional asset management business of BNP Paribas in Portugal, an institution where he performed functions, including management, between 1998 and 2006, he was also part of UBS Bank and Santander Investment.
His year of glory has been, to date, the last. The value of the AdC fines during 2019 reached a total higher than the sum of all those applied during the last 15 years of the institution’s existence, due to the number of sanctioned cases, the size and the number of companies involved.
As an example, in 2019, the AdC sentenced 14 banking institutions to pay fines totaling 225 million euros for a concerted practice of exchange of sensitive commercial information, over a period of more than ten years, between the years of 2002 and 2013. The banks convicted were BBVA, BIC (for acts practiced by BPN), BPI, BCP, BES, Banif, Barclays, CGD, Caixa Central de Crédito Agrícola Mútuo, Montepio, Santander (for acts practiced by you and Banco Popular), Deutsche Bank and UCI. Each bank provided the others with sensitive information about its commercial offers, indicating, for example, the spreads that would apply in the near future in mortgage credit processes. It is the AdC itself that the process has had a high degree of litigation since 2015, dragging on time.
This is not yet the end of the story for Margarida Matos Rosa at the head of the AdC. Since his term is six years, we will continue to hear a lot about Competition and its leader until the end of 2022.
[ad_2]
