Francisco Soares Machado is the new Partner at SÉRVULO
NEWS AND EVENTS 24 Nov 2025
Sérvulo & Associados has just welcomed Francisco Soares Machado as a partner in the Finance & Governance department, led by Manuel Magalhães and Paulo Câmara.
With more than 15 years’ experience in providing legal advice to financial institutions, including banks, investment firms, FinTech companies and asset managers, Francisco Soares Machado also advises on bank restructurings and M&A in this sector, as well as in the area of capital markets.
According to Manuel Magalhães, Managing Partner and Partner responsible for SÉRVULO’s Finance & Governance department, the integration of Francisco Soares Machado strengthens, to the benefit of clients, unique synergies in regulatory and transactional work, enabling the firm to ensure a high level of responsiveness across all areas of the financial sector, namely banking, finance and capital markets.
Francisco Soares Machado emphasises that SÉRVULO’s Finance & Governance team is, without any doubt, one of the most highly regarded in the Portuguese market, with exceptional technical capability and responsiveness to clients’ challenges.
Francisco Soares Machado
The lawyer joins from Cuatrecasas, where he spent the last seven years in the financial services practice. Previously, he was adviser to the Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg between 2015 and 2018. From 2012 to 2015, he was deputy to the Cabinet of the Minister of State and Finance of the XIX Constitutional Government, where he followed financial stability and banking regulation matters, in particular the recapitalisation and restructuring processes of Portuguese banks and the revision of the regulatory framework applicable to the financial sector. Before that, he had worked at Cuatrecasas since 2009.
He was a member of the Legal Committee of the Portuguese Institute of Corporate Governance and is currently a member of the Governance Lab think tank.
Francisco Soares Machado holds a Law degree (2008) from NOVA University Lisbon, an LLM in Corporate/Commercial Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a postgraduate qualification in Securities Law from the University of Lisbon. He has completed Level I of the CFA exam and is admitted not only to the Portuguese Bar Association but also to the Law Society of England and Wales as a solicitor.
He is a guest lecturer in banking and investment services in postgraduate and intensive programmes at the University of Lisbon, a trainer at the Institute of Banking Training, and the author of several articles and publications on banking law and corporate finance.