These days, Catalan finances are once again the most vigorous voice in the Spanish economic universe. La Caixa, the most important financial-investor group in the country, is the main star in large business operations of strategic caliber. And when she is not there, because it does not seem convenient, she is openly invited. High-tension relationships with politics and power, again as a key element of business in a world that is rapidly leaving behind the idea of an efficient, free, self-regulated, open and global market.
A kind of resurgence after long years marked by the financial crisis, the legal changes of the savings banks, the political crisis of the independence process, with the traumatic change of headquarters and the subsequent decision to mutate under a skin with hunches of a more investor discreet. After that silent phase, always one of the de facto powers of the economy, but less visible, more discreet, now his importance for the Catalan and Spanish economy has emerged like a bolt of lightning.
Although it is likely that the two top managers of that ship, the president of the galaxy, Isidro Fainé and the executive of Criteria, Ángel Simón, feel more comfortable if they are defined as Spaniards with a Catalan accent, there is no doubt that the renewed verve of La Caixa is part of the secular and unfinished file on Catalan finances and its role in Spain.
The leading figure of La Caixa in the recomposition of Naturgy's capital, Telefónica and its presence in Caixabank, the first bank in Spain, has no comparable model. The Government of Pedro Sánchez already sees it as emergency equipment for any rescue operation of a strategic company.
This has also been the case of the railway company Talgo, the subject of a Hungarian takeover bid to which the Spanish executive insists on confronting it with a proposal led by Criteria whose participation is not at all clear. Although Sánchez's economic team has also approached the other two large Spanish banks, Santander and BBVA, their hopes are minimal, as it is obvious that these are oriented exclusively to the banking and financial business and would disconcert the markets if they now announced business investments. .
During its long period of hibernation, the unique Criteria gave up relevant positions, which in some bourgeois salons in Barcelona and in the power centers of Madrid was interpreted as an irreversible decline of that model and the push of Catalan finances.
In 2014, the La Caixa holding company completed its exit from Agbar, sold to French capital and was left with a minority stake in Aguas de Barcelona. His influence in this multinational services group was reduced to a minority package in Suez, with Fainé on the board and the executive presidency of Ángel Simón, a trusted person of the former, although integrated into the French group.
In 2018, Abertis was left without, a particularly emblematic company as it was the first industrial investment of the century-old savings bank. It passed into the hands of the builder Florentino Pérez and the Italian group Atlantia (today Mundys). An operation that, in its beginnings, when it seemed that the only buyer was going to be the latter, generated visible disagreements that were not overcome with the then President of the Government, the popular Mariano Rajoy. An experience that those responsible for Criteria now keep in mind to avoid replicas in the current business movements in which it is involved.
In 2019 he definitively got rid of his package in the oil company Repsol.
Even the takeover of Bankia, which catapulted Caixabank, of which Criteria controls 31%, to prominent banking leadership in the Spanish market, was met with skepticism.
First, because the European Central Bank (ECB) limited the exercise of La Caixa's political rights, imposing an implacable incompatibility of access to the bank's board of directors of Criteria and the Foundation, which forced Fainé to abandon the presidency of the bank. .
Also because the merger implied the entry of the State into Caixabank, with 16%, read in some circles as the beginning of the end of the political independence of La Caixa, one of its flagship values and a source of public pride for its last three presidents, Josep Vilarasu, Ricardo Fornesa and Fainé himself.
And finally, in January 2021, an Australian fund, IFM, unexpectedly announced a takeover bid for 22% of Naturgy; company that already had 40% in the hands of foreign capital funds since 2016. A true jewel in the crown of La Caixa, the oldest investment in what remained of its portfolio, had entered in 1988, with Vilarasau as general director of the savings entity, when it was called Catalana de Gas y Electricidad and which was together with Caixabank the one that contributed the most dividends to the Foundation and with which the Social Work is financed. Together with Telefónica and Caixabank, one of the essential ones.
A real shakeup that crystallized the idea that the old model, the flagship, was fraying, diluting its strategic bets and focusing on an inconsequential chain of small, unprofitable shares without political or economic influence.
The Australian takeover provoked the first reaction from Fainé, who ordered the purchase of more Naturgy shares, not without some tension with the then executives of Criteria, who had accommodated themselves to easy operations and off the radar of public opinion and discussions with the Government.
It was also a time when the economic cycle was giving results in the form of increasing dividends from its investees, especially Caixabank and Naturgy. Criteria accumulated money, had reduced debt in relative terms and did not have excess pending write-offs. It even had a large real estate portfolio that still had the potential to provide new returns.
In the fall of 2021, Fainé had already decided that Criteria was going to change its policy. After years of retreat into scattered investments, of relatively small amounts, without influence on management and little strategic contribution, a consequence of the financial crisis and the restrictive regulation towards savings banks by the European banking authorities, the head of the Caixa galaxy had matured the change of direction.
However, the consequences of this review of the project would not be expressed until January of this year, when Ángel Simón was appointed new CEO of Criteria.
The new orientation is clear, strategic investments - including in this concept companies that are important to the Spanish economy and that are considered as such by the governments in power - that are generating benefits, that is, rescues and restructuring are ruled out and with the aim of maintaining for an indefinite period of time.
Investment is also contemplated in classic companies in the business sector, particularly, but not only, Catalan. Family businesses that undertake growth processes and can go to the stock markets. This is the case of the scheduled participation in the IPO of the fragrance company Puig, in which Criteria could assume up to 5%, which could represent almost 700 million, when it lands on the floor next month of May. A movement of complicity that recalls the first phase of the La Caixa business group during the final years of the last century and the first of the current one, until the global financial crisis.
At the headquarters of the La Caixa group, in the black towers of Barcelona's Diagonal, efforts are also being made to convey to the political forces, especially the party currently in opposition, the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, that the strategic turn of Criteria should not be read as an alliance with Sánchez or the socialist party but as a policy of convergence with the interests of the State.
And, according to the sources consulted, the objectives and benefits of the agreement negotiated in Naturgy with the Taqa company of Abu Dhabi have been explained to him, which in the opinion of those responsible for Criteria serves the purpose of maintaining in the orbit of the La Caixa group a of its emblematic companies, in which it has been involved for half a century and nourishes the coffers of its main shareholder.
