Álvaro Sobrinho

Álvaro de Oliveira Madaleno Sobrinho (born 1962) is a Portuguese Angolan banker and businessman that developed his career in Portugal. He rose to prominence as director of Portuguese bank Banco Espírito Santo that went bankrupt in 2014.

He went on to lead Banco Valor Angola and invested in a number of businesses in Africa and invested in Portuguese football club Sporting CP and two Portuguese newspapers. He also founded the Planet Earth Institute Foundation in Mauritius with the President of Mauritius.

Early life and education
Sobrinho was born in Angola and moved to Portugal to study Mathematics and Statistics at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. In Portugal he met Ricardo Salgado who mentored him and helped to develop his career.

Career
Following a decade-long tenure with Grupo Banco Espírito Santo, Sobrinho became a director of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) in Lisbon (aged 38). Following this, he played a key role in creating the subsidiary in Angola, known as Banco Espírito Santo

In 2013, Sobrinho took charge of Banco Valor Angola as its Executive Chairman although later stood down from executive roles to focus on other business investments. Banco Valor is reportedly the 13th largest bank in Angola.

In July 2014, the Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso reported that BESA did not know to whom it had extended loans worth US$5.7 billion – around 80 percent of its debt portfolio – during the mandate of previous chief executive Álvaro Sobrinho, who left the post in October 2012.

In 2015 Sobrinho was cleared of these allegations related to the collapse of the bank. and has continued to battle for compensation from the Expresso news outlet.

Personal life
Sobrinho holds large investments in telecommunications with YooMee Africa and the media industry with Newshold Group, as well as additional ventures including publishing, manufacturing, retail, travel business and renewable energies. In 2015 Sobrinho was sported to have driven an investment related to exploration drilling in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Sobrinho owns Holdimo, a company with (as of August 2017) the largest private shareholding of Portuguese sports club Sporting CP. In a 2018 interview, Sobrinho said that he and Holdimo would do "everything in their power" to remove the then-president of Sporting, Bruno de Carvalho, from his position, following the poor performance of the football team and tensions between supporters after the violent attack by Sporting fans on the team's players and manager at their training ground on 15 May that year.

Sobrinho is involved with philanthropy in Africa, as the Founding Chairman of the Planet Earth Institute (PEI) in London. The Planet Earth Institute is accredited to the United Nations Environmental Programme and its mission is the "scientific independence of Africa".

In 2015, Sobrinho had been appointed as Business Champion for African Science by the World Bank.

Sobrinho has donated to other Africa-focused charities and programs, including the Duke of Edinburgh International Award and GAVI Alliance.

in 2015, The Planet Earth Institute launched the Planet Earth Institute Foundation in Mauritius, with Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, former President of Mauritius, as its vice-chairman. The PEI Foundation awarded scholarships to Mauritian researchers.

Estoril Sol
Portuguese authorities had investigated Sobrinho when he was the chairman of Banco Espírito Santo Angola (BESA in relation to his use of an overseas company to purchase six apartments in the Estoril Sol Residence complex in Lisbon, Portugal, with an initial payment of €9.5 million.

During the investigations, the apartments were seized by court order, but were later returned to Sobrinho because of lack of evidence.

Monte Branco
Sobrinho was also a shareholder of Swiss wealth management company Akoya Asset Management, which featured briefly in the Monte Branco investigation into tax evasion.

Sobrinho ordered an investigation from the Swiss authorities, that cleared him and all non-executive shareholders of wrongdoing.