University of Porto – FEP | PBS

The Faculdade de Economia do Porto (FEP), officially the School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto, was established in 1953 as part of the University of Porto — itself founded in 1911 and one of the largest and most research-intensive universities in Portugal. Located in Porto, Portugal's second city and a growing hub for technology, finance, and international business, FEP operates as the university's economics and management faculty while Porto Business School (PBS) functions as the executive and professional education arm of FEP, channelling its academic base into applied programs for practitioners. The school's guiding philosophy is one of evidence-based management education — grounding leadership development in economic analysis and empirical research rather than in consultancy frameworks or business school mythology.

Accreditations and Rankings

Accreditations:

• AACSB accredited — one of fewer than 6% of business schools worldwide to hold this credential
• EQUIS accredited — awarded by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD)
• FEP | PBS holds both AACSB and EQUIS, placing it in a select group within Portuguese business education

Rankings:

• Financial Times Masters in Management ranking: FEP's MSc in Economics and Management consistently appears in the FT's European rankings
• Eduniversal Best Masters ranking: FEP programs ranked among top programmes in Southern Europe in multiple categories (2023)
• University of Porto ranked among the top 300 universities globally — QS World University Rankings (2024)

Executive Education at a Glance

Porto Business School's executive education portfolio is deliberately structured around the needs of mid-to-senior career professionals in Iberian and Lusophone markets, while increasingly drawing international participants. The school runs both open enrollment programs and fully customised corporate programs, with custom work for major Portuguese and multinational companies representing a substantial and growing share of the activity. Core topic areas include strategic management, financial leadership, digital transformation, sustainability, and supply chain management — with particular depth in programmes designed for executives operating in Portuguese-speaking markets across Europe, Africa, and South America.

Open programs typically run in modular formats — two to four days per module over several weeks — to accommodate working schedules, with options for blended delivery increasingly available. The school's flagship offering, the Executive MBA, is structured as a part-time program spanning 18 months. Open program fees are notably competitive compared to Western European peers, generally ranging from approximately €1,500 to €6,000 depending on program length and format. PBS also runs short intensive programs through partnerships with international schools, broadening the geographic exposure available to participants without requiring them to travel.

Campus and Facilities

FEP's main building on Rua Dr. Roberto Frias is a purpose-built academic campus on the eastern edge of Porto, equipped with dedicated seminar rooms, executive learning spaces, and research facilities suited to graduate and professional cohorts. Porto Business School operates from facilities designed with practitioner learning in mind — including collaborative working spaces, breakout rooms, and digital infrastructure to support hybrid delivery. Beyond the campus itself, Porto is a material advantage: a city with a cost of living well below Lisbon or Madrid, a thriving startup and technology scene (NOS, Farfetch, and dozens of international firms have significant Porto presences), and a quality of life that makes intensive residential modules genuinely enjoyable rather than merely tolerable. The city's position as a transatlantic and Lusophone business gateway gives executive programs here a geopolitical relevance that programmes in other European cities cannot easily replicate.

Faculty and Research

FEP's faculty numbers over 120 academics, drawn from across Europe, Latin America, and beyond, with a meaningful proportion holding doctorates from international institutions including LSE, Tilburg, and Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Research strengths cluster around industrial economics, macroeconomics and monetary policy, labour economics, and quantitative finance — areas with direct relevance to executive education in strategy and financial leadership. The school's CEFUP (Center for Economics and Finance at the University of Porto) functions as a leading research hub in Portugal, producing work that directly informs the curriculum rather than sitting at a distance from teaching. Faculty regularly engage with Portuguese public institutions, the European Central Bank, and international development organisations, which means participants in PBS programs are learning from people who are actively involved in shaping economic and business policy, not just studying it.

Student Body, Alumni, and Career Outcomes

FEP's broader alumni network encompasses over 15,000 graduates across economics, management, and related fields, with particularly strong representation in Portuguese banking, energy, retail, and professional services sectors — institutions like BPI, EDP, Sonae, and the major consulting practices all have notable concentrations of FEP alumni. Executive education cohorts at PBS are typically intimate — often 20 to 35 participants per open program — which creates a genuinely high-ratio learning environment and meaningful professional networks rather than anonymous large cohorts. The Lusophone dimension is a recurring theme: many PBS executive participants work in or with Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, or Cape Verde, and the school's network and case material reflects that reality more authentically than most European business schools can. Career pivot data specific to executive participants is not widely published, but senior professional cohorts consistently report that access to FEP's research base and practitioner faculty is the distinguishing value proposition.