Portugal's Lisbon Court of Appeal ruled on 10 February 2025 that €225 million in fines imposed on eleven banks, including the country's largest lenders, for exchanging sensitive commercial information on mortgage, consumer and business lending between 2002 and 2013 could not stand, determining that the penalties had expired under the applicable statute of limitations before they could be enforced.

The original fines were imposed in September 2019 by Portugal's Competition Authority, the Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC), following a multi-year investigation that found the banks had engaged in anti-competitive conduct by exchanging commercially sensitive information, including spreads, on mortgage, consumer and business credit. The appeal court's ruling is procedural rather than substantive: it does not overturn the AdC's underlying finding of collusion but concludes solely that the limitation period had elapsed, rendering the financial penalties legally unenforceable.

LIMITATION PERIOD RULED EXPIRED BEFORE ENFORCEMENT

The court determined that the limitation period for the penalties expired on 1 September 2023 — a year before the Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court in Santarém upheld the fines in September 2024. A secondary calculation, incorporating extensions to procedural deadlines that were applied across the Portuguese legal system during the COVID-19 pandemic, produced an alternative expiry date of 11 February 2024. In either scenario, the appeals court concluded that time had run out before the fines achieved a definitively enforceable status.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), the state-owned bank, faced the largest individual fine of €82 million. Banco Comercial Português (BCP) was assessed €60 million, Santander Portugal €35.65 million, Banco BPI €30 million, and Montepio €13 million. The Portuguese branch of BBVA was fined €2.5 million, with the remaining institutions in the group of eleven subject to smaller amounts bringing the collective total to €225 million.

Under the ruling, none of the eleven institutions is required to pay the sums originally assessed against them unless the decision is overturned at a higher level of the judicial hierarchy.

COMPETITION AUTHORITY WEIGHS FURTHER LEGAL ACTION

Portugal's Competition Authority responded to the ruling by reaffirming that the appeals court decision was purely procedural and that its own underlying finding of anti-competitive conduct in the Portuguese credit market remained intact. The AdC stated it was considering whether to pursue an appeal to Portugal's Constitutional Court.