The Governor of the Bank of Portugal (BdP) assured today that the early retirement of Mário Centeno “was a mutual agreement, there was no dismissal or favoritism” and “complied with all established rules.”
“Both the Bank of Portugal and Professor Mário Centeno, former Governor, reached an agreement for his early retirement,” stated Álvaro Santos Pereira during a parliamentary hearing on the matter, emphasizing that it “followed all defined rules, many of which are common to all banking sector employees and negotiated with unions.”
The governor clarified that “it was a mutual agreement, no dismissal or favoritism occurred, these were the Bank of Portugal’s rules.”
Centeno “retired with a salary level determined by the rules in place and based on the importance of the positions he previously held,” he explained, noting that the calculation considered the worker’s full public service career, including periods outside the bank, during which contributions were made to the pension fund or equivalent schemes.
Read more about this topic: Retirement scheme: Parliament approves hearing of Bank of Portugal governor over Centeno’s pension
Santos Pereira highlighted that the pension granted had a replacement rate—measuring the percentage of the last salary received upon retirement—“lower than the average for bank employees,” at 72%, while the average replacement rate for BdP staff is around 78%.
The current governor also clarified that being a consultant “is not a career path” within the central bank, being a role reserved for senior staff who, after serving on the Board of Directors or holding top positions elsewhere, “return to the institution without immediate reintegration into leadership roles and are assigned projects or tasks directly under the administration.”
When Santos Pereira took office, there were eight administration consultants, one of whom already had a planned retirement. By today, a solution had been found for five of the seven active administration consultants, including Mário Centeno.
Read more: Largest banks in Portugal with record profits earned €14 million per day in 2025
He considered it “time to change the administration consultant regime,” arguing that the function’s nature “does not justify the associated costs.”
“For the future, I believe that staff appointed to the Board of Directors should have two options after completing their tenure: reintegration into a clearly defined management or leadership role within the bank, or, after the end of the ‘cooling-off’ period, continuation of their professional career outside the institution,” he concluded.
