Banco Sabadell once again defends itself against the public purchase offer launched by BBVA, which on Thursday asked the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) to accelerate the approval of the purchase offer without carrying out a more in-depth analysis.
“There is a clamor, in Spain, from the autonomous communities, from the political arc, according to which it is [una operación] “Bad,” Banco Sabadell CEO César González-Bueno said at a press conference. He also doesn’t think it’s a “friendly” proposition. “When they send you an offer the day before and tell you you can’t negotiate, it’s not friendly,” he said just hours after BBVA CEO Onur Genç called the “Non-hostile” takeover bid. “And when you say no, three days later you make a hostile takeover bid. No one liked that, it complicated things, even the numbers. How is there going to be an overlap of 1% if we have one in two SMEs in Spain,” he listed.
González-Bueno also highlighted the fact that the public takeover offer has no appeal due to the evolution of the two banks on the stock exchange. “We haven’t changed course, we’re not doing strange things.” The takeover offer “does not seem to be happening because there is no price. We are up 4% since the offering, BBVA is down 17%. Caixabank and Bankinter increased by 4%. And BBVA fell half as much as Mexican banks, which fell more than 30%.
And he believes that Competition will take its time to analyze the operation. “We are respectful of the CNMC. The logic is that it should be analyzed in depth, if it’s not a complicated offer, I don’t know what is; and there are a lot of people who want to appear on the record. Honestly, the logic is that this will eventually move to phase 2.”
As happened with BBVA, the manager of Sabadell assumes that it could happen that the CNMV opens the deadline for acceptance of the offer, without Concurrence having declared that it accepted the proposal or imposed conditions on it. “The president of the CNMV explained that when there is an operation of this type, it is better that it is resolved as quickly as possible; but you also need to have all the necessary information. What should take precedence? In my opinion, the second. In these circumstances, we must call on the light and the stenographers,” assured González-Bueno. “It’s good that this is decided as soon as possible, with all the information on the table. If your value decreases by 10 billion and you are under market pressure and you cannot buy back shares, it makes sense that you are in a hurry, but you cannot cause dramatic damage to the competition.
He points out that there could be 4,000 layoffs
In this change of discourse that Sabadell sees at BBVA, its CEO cites that at the beginning he considered that the savings came from IT [tecnología]There are now 4,000 people on the streets. The same synergies were going to be achieved with or without a merger, but not anymore. It was said that it was [en Competencia en] Phase 1 and it’s not so safe anymore. “Time proves us right.”
This figure of 4,000 layoffs guarantees that this is information that they deduced from the data that BBVA sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the supervisor of the American stock market. “At the SEC, they worked out what the savings are by letting people go and if you put that into personnel costs, you get 4,000 people.”
In May, the president of BBVA, Carlos Torres, had already recognized that the integration of the two banks would lead to a reduction in staff. “There may be departures of people in the short term, but we have experience” of reductions and “non-traumatic” departures,” Torres said at the time.
And regarding acceptance by shareholders, the CEO of Sabadell indicated that he detected a rejection, but with nuances. “The Sabadell shareholders association says no” and “when we have private conversations” with institutional investors “they tell us what they think. I don’t think they have the information they need to decide anyway. Right now, at this price, no; But for now, they don’t have to make a decision. “Now is not the time and they don’t have all the cards on the table.”
He also doesn’t believe it’s easy to improve the takeover bid. “If the offer is improved”, he believes, “it will be analyzed using the best criteria” and “it will have to be given priority over any other criterion”. “The chances of that happening are low, he told us he couldn’t raise the price because the stock had fallen 6 billion and now it’s down 10,000.”
Criticisms of the tax but possibility of modifying it
Like the rest of the banks, which have been very critical of the tax at a time when profits are once again reaching record figures, he believes that it is possible to make changes to the parliamentary procedure “until it is processed, passes all procedures and becomes law.” .”
The CEO of Banco Sabadell did not want to enter into the debate on whether banks are discriminated against energy companies, from which the special tax is removed. “Not discriminated against either. » “There are amendments, there will be parliamentary procedures and there are possibilities of modifications, but I don’t know more.” “There was an attempt at dialogue and the channels were not effective,” he admitted.
