“I’ll open a bottle of champagne the day nobody asks me about the sale of Meo”

The sale of Meo is still the unavoidable question, and Ana Figueiredo does not hide a certain weariness with the subject: “I’ll open a bottle of champagne the day nobody asks me about the sale of Meo”, she quips, before steering the conversation back to running the company. The CEO insists that “shareholder decisions are for the shareholder” and that the board is focused on executing the strategic plan, making the company “more robust” and ensuring operational, competitive and financial strength.

Even as Patrick Drahi, the shareholder, has put Altice Portugal out of its creditors’ reach and has just completed the sale of SFR in France, Ana Figueiredo rejects the idea that the possible sale of Meo constrains the board. She says the company has invested 1.8 billion euros over the last four years and has never felt limited in carrying out the plan. “If we create value, we create value for the present shareholder and for the future shareholder”, she says. On what Meo is worth, she avoids giving figures: it is worth “whatever someone is willing to pay for a unique asset in Portugal” — or, quoting Drahi, the “Portuguese Belém Tower”.