CNMC President on BBVA and Sabadell: “More banking institutions do not necessarily mean more competition” | Companies

The President of Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), Cani Fernandez, said this Wednesday that “more banking institutions do not necessarily mean more competition” and stressed: “We must take into account that “markets also react depending on the strength of opponents “

“What we really need to avoid is that there is essentially a loss of competition in the markets that we are analyzing (…),” he said.

Fernandez made these statements in response to questions from journalists at the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences of the University of Alicante (UA) at the San Vicente del Raspeig campus, where he took part in the colloquium “Challenges in the regulation of digital and artificial intelligence platforms.” .

When asked what Competition’s position is regarding BBVA’s hostile takeover bid for Sabadell, Fernandez said they have nothing to comment at this time as they have not yet been notified. In fact, you will first have to notify the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) and then notify the CNMC within five days.

After receiving the notification, the CNMC will carry out its own “analysis strictly from a competition point of view and, of course, following all the precedents” that they have already applied, for example in the cases of Caixabanka Bankia and Unicaja Liberbank, which “already note “The methodology of the analysis is very clear, and what is “Ultimately, the approach that a competition authority should take to banking concentration of any type, regardless of whether it occurs through an acquisition, merger or takeover.”

“For us, the analysis will always be what happens to the markets in any of these operations, and that is the approach we will take,” Fernandez indicated, noting that the operation cannot be carried out without a favorable resolution from a competition point of view.

Asked whether BBVA’s hostile takeover proposal for Sabadell could be similar to any previous case, the CNMC president replied that “from a purely competition perspective, it could be similar to previous ones.”

“Obviously, in short, the concentration of two banking organizations is happening in an environment in which other previous transactions have already taken place, which we have already analyzed, and it will be similar in terms of methodology, it will be exactly the same. “We have already used it in previous cases such as Caixabank Bankia and Unicaja Liberbank,” he noted.

When asked that there are fewer banking institutions, Fernandez answered in the affirmative. “The other day I was analyzing what happened from 2008 to 2024. There were about fifty businesses in 2008, but more businesses do not necessarily mean more competition. We must take into account that markets also react depending on the strength of opponents,” he emphasized.

“What we really need to avoid is losing competition in the markets that we analyze, and we will analyze it market by market. Some markets will be more local in their scope (…), others may be much broader in their scope,” for example, “markets for online services that already have a broader geographic dimension,” he said.

“We will analyze in each of these areas what the configuration of the markets is, and if there is a loss of effective competition as a result of the operation, we will take the necessary measures,” he said.

Asked whether every merger entails job losses, Fernandez said “not necessarily” and stressed that “this is an issue that will also depend on what business plans the companies have.”

Regarding the possibility of job losses, the CNMC President said: “The question is whether effective competition will remain in the structure after the concentration operation. If that means more or less offices, more or less services, it will need to be looked at at the postcode level, and that’s how we’ve analyzed it in all the previous cases.”

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