The commercial court of Seville has announced this morning that the company Cox Energy will assume the productive business of the 28 subsidiaries of Abengoa, the Andalusian giant in the engineering and renewable energy sector whose companies entered bankruptcy proceedings at the end of last year with a debt of 6,000 million euros.
The Spanish Cox Energy, specialized in photovoltaic energy, thus prevails over the offers that had been presented by Urbas, Terramar, RCP and Ultramar. The proposal from the Madrid company, led by the young businessman Enrique Riquelme, contemplates preserving around 9,500 jobs and values the assets of Abengoa's subsidiaries at 564 million euros, an offer that was presented last March and that initially was not the favourite.
According to the order to which La Vanguardia has had access, the operation is subject to the approval of the Ministry of Defense since one of the companies in competition is carrying out a project for the public company Navantia.
In any case, the judge justifies the choice of Cox Energy after verifying that its balance sheet is healthy, that it has liquidity of 31.3 million euros and a line of financing of 50 million, 20 of which have already been provided, in addition to a line of financing with Barclays Bank of Ireland and conversations to obtain resources through the Official Credit Institute (ICO). The company also undertakes to assume the litigation of the bankrupts with the commitment to pay 50% of the amount recovered from the bankruptcy.
