The Portuguese banker, who was CEO of Santander in Portugal and after that had an international career, will return to banking after a three and a half year break. He will be vice-president of the French bank Crédit Commercial de France (CFF), reported the Spanish newspaper Expansión.
Aged 61, Horta Osório has been working in non-executive roles at CCF, a subsidiary of My Money Group, which is controlled by the Cerberus fund since August. It is a bank of modest dimensions, compared to the giants it has already passed through.
The manager presided over Santander in the United Kingdom until 2010. He was invited by the British executive to preside over the then nationalized Lloyds, with the challenge of restructuring the bank, which he did later moving to Credit Suisse, where he served as chairman of the board of directors. He left for having twice violated quarantine rules in Switzerland and the United Kingdom — namely when he traveled to London, in 2021, to watch the Wimbledon final and the European Football Championship final on the same day, violating Covid-19 regulations. He used a private jet from the bank for this.
CFF bank, according to Expansión, has a balance sheet of 31 billion euros and revenues of 809 million euros, recording losses before taxes and extraordinary items of 104 million, as shown by the bank’s results in 2024. According to Reuters, the company will have proposed cutting a thousand jobs, compared to the 3,500 employees that the institution currently has.
The Portuguese managed to restructure and recover Lloyds, completely reprivatizing it in 2017. During his time at the British bank, Horta-Osório faced a period of ‘stress’ and insomnia in 2011, with his involvement in personal controversies.
Despite this, António Horta-Osório — who was appointed “sir” in the United Kingdom in 2021 — has not left the business and financial world since his resignation from Credit Suisse.
He is currently president of the pharmaceutical company Bial and a non-executive member of the board of the Portuguese group José de Mello, the financial services company Teya and the Champalimaud Foundation, in addition to being a senior consultant at Mediobanca, Precision Capital and Cerberus Capital Management (in the latter case, since June 2022).