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U.Porto Memory

University of Porto Famous Alumni

Jorge Jardim Gonçalves

Jorge Jardim Gonçalves 1935- Teacher, engineer and businessman

Jorge Manuel Jardim Gonçalves was born in Santa Maria Maior, Funchal, on 4 October 1935. He is the son of Agostinho Carlos Gonçalves, a trader in Madeira Island, and of Maria Bernardete Estêvão de Sousa Jardim Gonçalves, who owned a school in Funchal.

He attended the preparatory courses in Civil Engineering at the University of Coimbra, and soon became very attached to the football club Académica (Associação Académica de Coimbra), but was nevertheless a fan of Marítimo football club.
Although he started his studies in Coimbra, he majored in Civil Engineering in Porto, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, in 1961, with the final mark of fifteen out of twenty.
In the early 1960s, he trained in Funchal, in the expansion works of the local airport.

He began his engineering career and did his military service in Angola, during the Colonial War (1961-1974). In 1962 he married Maria da Assunção Osório de Vasconcelos, and had five children.

In 1969, he returned to the Faculty of Engineering of Porto as Second Assistant in the 3^rd group (Hydraulics). In that same year, he was appointed Third Class Civil Engineer in the Douro and Leixões Port Administration. In the second half of the following year, he rose to the rank of Eventual Assistant.

One year later, he changed professions and moved to Lisbon. He began a banking career at the Bank of Agriculture, where, after the traineeship period, he was appointed Executive Director.

After the nationalization of banks in Portugal with the 25 April 1974 Revolution, he went into exile to Madrid, where he held management functions at "Companhia de Gestão e Indústrias", of Banco Popular Espanhol (1975-1976), through which he came into contact with (and later joined) Opus Dei, a catholic institution founded by Josemaria Escrivã de Balaguer, to which he belongs as supernumerary.

He returned to Portugal in 1977, after he had been appointed to the Management Council of Banco Português do Atlântico, at the invitation of the Minister of Finance, Medina Carreira, and following a meeting with the President of the Portuguese Republic, Ramalho Eanes. The, in 1979 he was appointed Chairman of BPA and of Banco Comercial de Macau.

In the 1980s, he was persuaded to be part of a project of a bank - Banco Comercial do Norte, led by the businessmen Américo Amorim, António Gonçalves and J. Macedo Silva. The new bank was formally set up in 1985 under the name Banco Comercial Português, and Jardim Gonçalves occupied the Chair of the Board.

From this time onward, Portuguese banking turned a new chapter. In 1995, BCP assumed control over Banco Português do Atlântico and later, in 2000, of Banco Mello, Companhia de Seguros Império [insurance company] and Banco Pinto & Sotto Mayor. In 2003, it adopted the name Millennium BCP.

In March 2005, Jardim Gonçalves handed the position of Chairman of the Board to Paulo Teixeira Pinto. From then until mid-2008, he kept the positions of Chairman of the General Council and Supervisory Board and of the Superior Council of Millennium BCP. As a result of a heated debate between two groups of shareholders in the Board of Directors, which ended with Paulo Teixeira Pinto leaving the institution, Jardim Gonçalves he also left the bank and all his charges.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2008)