MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish lender Abanca is not interested in a merger with Sabadell, it said on Monday, dismissing a report in newspaper Expansion it was considering such a deal in response to a hostile takeover bid from BBVA.<\/p>\n
The newspaper cited unidentified sources as saying Sabadell had held preliminary talks with shareholders in Abanca, which is majority-owned by businessman Juan Carlos Escotet.<\/p>\n
“Abanca wishes to reiterate that it has no interest in this transaction,” the lender said in a statement, adding it would not comment further on market speculation.<\/p>\n
Sabadell declined to comment on the Expansion report.<\/p>\n
Spain’s competition watchdog, the CNMC, has approved BBVA’s takeover bid provided it makes concessions.<\/p>\n
The Spanish government, however, opposes the deal because of fears it could lead to job losses. It launched a non-binding public consultation on the matter last week.<\/p>\n
Spanish legislation requires the governing bodies of a company targeted in a takeover bid to remain passive and request shareholder approval before taking any action that might prevent an acquisition from succeeding.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, newspaper La Vanguardia reported the government told Sabadell Chairman Josep Oliu that having a core shareholder group would make it easier to fend off approaches from third parties.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Spanish economy ministry said it had no information.<\/p>\n
Should any transaction materialise, it said the government would assess it according to public interest criteria.<\/p>\n
The government was focused on assessing whether additional measures on the proposed BBVA-Sabadell deal were needed, the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n
Under Spanish law, the government cannot stop a bid from being made, but it has the final word on whether a merger goes ahead. The economy ministry has until May 27 to take the deal to a cabinet meeting after the CNMC’s authorisation.<\/p>\n
The government then has a month to make a final decision on whether to approve the deal with or without conditions.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jes\u00fas Aguado; Editing by Inti Landauro, Joe Bavier and Barbara Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish lender Abanca is not interested in a merger with Sabadell, it said on Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[44659,44662,44660,2000,299,44661,44658,44663,44657,104],"class_list":["post-95264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-abanca","tag-bbva","tag-cnmc","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-hostile-takeover","tag-juan-carlos-escotet","tag-public-interest-criteria","tag-sabadell","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114494767486417162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}