In mid-April, BBVA made a first contact with Banc Sabadell about the possibility of resuming merger talks between the two entities, days before a journalistic report revealed its plans and precipitated the publication of the project, indicate sources familiar with the process. .
The intention was, as Expansión advances, to prepare a slower process for the operation to mature. However, when the British channel Sky News reported the information, the CNMV issued a request to BBVA, which had to recognize its plan. The next day, the bank detailed the proposal in order to provide transparency.
Sources indicate that BBVA also held a board of directors meeting in mid-April in which this issue was addressed. They also affirm that before the presentation of Sabadell's quarterly results, BBVA asked the Catalan bank to hold a meeting on this matter, without negotiations ever taking place.
After receiving the formal proposal from BBVA on April 30, Sabadell convened its board of directors last week to take a position this Monday. Their conclusion was that BBVA's approach “significantly undervalues” the bank. This Wednesday, he also published the message that the president of BBVA, Carlos Torres, sent to Sabadell on Sunday, in which he warned that there will be “no room to improve the economic terms” of the offer.
The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) revealed today that BBVA contacted the supervisor last week, in the midst of the former's offer for the latter. The president of the organization, Cani Fernández, pointed out that it was a “courtesy contact” by “the parties” and added that her teams cannot begin to analyze an operation of this type until there is a binding agreement.
Fernández, who participated in the inauguration of the annual Assembly of the Family Business Institute (IEF), has made it clear that the CNMC will be vigilant if BBVA is interested in acquiring Sabadell again and will apply the same rules to demand that competition be guaranteed. in the banking market. The president of the regulator added that this analysis would be carried out “market by market”, as was done with the two previous mergers, that of CaixaBank and Bakia and that of Unicaja and Liberbank, which she has cited.
“We will ensure that it does not harm competition,” stated the presidency of the CNMC, before clarifying that a bank merger cannot necessarily affect services for clients, since there may be large entities that compete intensely in the markets. current markets. If a binding agreement is reached and if a merger between BBVA and Sabadell imposes competition restrictions, “we will verify the necessity and proportionality test.” “We will carry out the same analysis, with the same intensity, with which previous operations have been carried out,” Fernández stated.
The president recalled that in the case of the merger between CaixaBank and Bankia, the CNMC required the merged company to make specific commitments or divestments in the initial part of the operation with the aim of not delaying it too much.
Cani Fernández has also pointed out that one of the tasks of the CNMC is the control of concentrations, something to which the organization is dedicating a significant effort. In the face of bank mergers, the objective of Competition is to make clear at the beginning of the operation the conditions so as to “not hinder business work,” she specified.
Fernández has also announced that the CNMC is carrying out a study on the problems faced by business growth in Spain and has asked family business owners to collaborate in this project.
