Mechanical & Electrical building services

Returns, compounded.

A Portuguese holding company building the national leader in Mechanical & Electrical building services. We bring together the best HVAC, refrigeration and electrical SMEs, add scale and capital, and let the returns compound.

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One name, three meanings — the spine of everything we do.

The meaning of Retorno

Return air

The trade, made literal

Return air is where every HVAC system breathes. It is the work itself — the mechanical and electrical systems that keep buildings running, day after day.

Return on capital

Growth with method

We bring good companies together and run them well. We buy with judgement, invest where it counts, and let capital compound — year after year, no shortcuts.

The return home

We came back to invest

We built our careers abroad and came back to Portugal — to back the businesses here and the people who built them.

The vision

Building the national Mechanical & Electrical leader

Portugal's building-services market is strong but scattered — hundreds of excellent regional companies, each held back by its own size. We are bringing them into a single national group with the weight to win larger contracts, share procurement and back-office strength, and stand level with the big international groups.

M&EMechanical & Electrical building services
HVAC · Refrigeration · Electricaland adjacent trades
Nationalone country-wide champion, not many small players

What we do

Acquire. Invest & scale. Compound.

A simple, repeatable playbook, applied with discipline.

Acquire

We bring on board profitable, well-run SMEs in HVAC, refrigeration and adjacent M&E trades — businesses with loyal customers, skilled teams and a name worth carrying forward.

Invest & scale

We add capital, the buying power of a national group, shared back-office strength, modern digital tools and access to larger contracts — building on what each team already masters, side by side with them.

Compound

Shared scale, procurement and back-office lift every company in the group. Returns compound as the national platform grows.

For business owners

An invitation to build something bigger

You built a real business — solid, profitable, respected. It now has the chance to be part of something bigger than it could ever become alone. We are assembling the national Mechanical & Electrical leader, and the best regional HVAC, refrigeration and electrical businesses in Portugal are its building blocks.

Be part of something bigger

A country-wide M&E group with the scale to win larger contracts, share procurement and back-office strength, and stand level with the big international groups.

More reach, more resources

Capital, modern digital tools and the buying power of a national group — added to what you've already built, so the business keeps growing and winning bigger work. We're not here to teach you the trade; we're here to give it scale.

A home to last, not a flip

We are operators, not financial buyers. Your people, your customers and your name carry on. We respect what you built and continue it.

A real next chapter

Continuity for your team and a genuine next chapter for you — in whatever role you want, including staying invested in what comes next.

A fair, confidential, founder-to-founder process — run by people who know the trade from the ground up.

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Who's behind it

Two founders. Operations and capital.

Two equal partners — operations and capital — back home to invest in Portuguese M&E businesses and the people who built them.

Operations & building systems

Knows Mechanical & Electrical and building operations from the field up — and has built and scaled the technology to match.

Delivered M&E building systems on some of the most demanding projects in the world — the World Trade Center rebuild in New York (Tower 1, Tower 4, the Transportation Hub and the Vehicular Security Center), with $20M+/yr P&L responsibility, and as owner's-rep MEP lead on Lisbon's Champalimaud Centre.
Set up and ran an operating control room to optimise field dispatch for The Crown Estate in the UK — running M&E service operations at scale.
Scaled a smart-building platform as Chief Product Officer through to a trade-sale exit to JLL, and built industrial IoT for predictive maintenance and OEE.
An MSc in finance and a Harvard data-science master's; active angel investor.

Capital & transformation

Has run and restructured private-equity-backed companies — and executed the deals that transformed them.

A finance and transformation operator with 25+ years across Portugal, Brazil, the UK, the USA and Sweden — 15 in CFO/CEO seats, mostly in private-equity-backed companies and multinationals, plus eight years advising up to partner level.
As CFO then CEO, led the financial and corporate restructuring of a PE-backed Portuguese motorway concession and ran its sale at a top-quartile EBITDA multiple; turned around one of Portugal's largest resorts as Group CFO/COO.
Senior executive and non-executive roles across infrastructure, power & renewables, hospitality, real estate and manufacturing — deep in restructurings, debt refinancings, organisational transformation and M&A.
Harvard Leadership Program and an MSc in Finance; angel investor, conference speaker and guest lecturer.

People who know the trade from the tools up and know how to put capital to work — back home to invest in Portuguese M&E businesses.