The Spanish Council of Ministers decided this Tuesday, August 27, following the opinion of the Foreign Investment Council of the Ministry of Industry, to veto the public takeover bid (OPA) launched by the Hungarian holding company Magyar Vagon (Ganz-MaVag) to control 100% of the Spanish company Talgo, worth 619 million euros. To this end, the government used the rule approved in March 2020 to protect the most important Spanish companies, severely weakened financially by the COVID19 epidemic, which prohibited the participation of more than 10% of their capital to foreign investors without prior authorization, and which was extended in 2022 until the end of 2024. To justify its decision, the Spanish government cited the need to protect Spain’s strategic and national security interests.
No surprise, since already in March, when the offer was made official, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, expressed serious reservations about the possibility of a Hungarian company taking full control of one of the main Spanish technology companies. important in a sector as sensitive as transport and with significant export capacity. What is not so clear are the alleged “strategic and national security” reasons, especially because they have not wanted to explain them on the grounds that they are partly classified issues.
