Criteria completes a corporate agreement with Taqa to retain its 27% stake in Naturgy following the takeover of Emirates.
Complete negotiations between Criteria Caixa and energy giant Taqa. The option for a joint public offering of Naturgy shares has been postponed. As ABC has learned, at the last hour the holding company in which la Caixa is invested stepped aside and remained just an intermediary, yes, with a signature corporate agreement which will allow it to maintain its current stake in the Spanish energy company (26.7%).
Thus, if this latest agreement is signed, the Emirates will begin takeover bid for all of Naturgy, in which they expect the funds to participate are CVC with 20.7% and GIP – a manager that will be owned by BlackRock when the government gives final approval for the purchase – with 20.6%. Sources interviewed explain that, in addition, part of the current capital on the stock market – the so-called “free float” – will also predictably sell their participation in order to make money. Currently this percentage is 12.9%.
The same sources claim that the remaining shareholders would not refuse their participation, so the Australians IFM will retain their 15%, and the Algerians Sonatrach (Société Nationale pour la Recherche, la Production, le Transport, la Transformation, et la Commercialization des Hydrocarbures spa, the state company for the exploitation of the country’s hydrocarbon resources), with its 4.1% . So the percentage that will remain in the stock market will be around the current 12%, or somewhat less if there are logically minority shareholders willing to sell.
At a later stage of the operation, depending on how negotiations are going at the moment, Taka undertakes to resell about 11% to remain at least 30%, but not more than 40%.
Guarantee Spanishness via SEPI
If there is this commitment on the part of the Emirates, the government will approve the operation, but with the obligatory condition: guarantee spanishness in Naturgy’s shareholding, which would then pass out of the hands of its investment arm: the State Society for Industrial Participation (SEPI), which would buy a smaller stake in a “Telefonica affair” style, allowing it to have at least one member on the energy board.
Financial sources assure the newspaper that SEPI’s purchase of this participation will at a lower price than the one Taka would buy.
Some market sources agree that the government launch last Wednesday now makes sense as Economy Minister Carlos Bodias the main character. La Moncloa never gives up without a fight and decided to take advantage of the flurry of mixed and varied information in the media to reaffirm its position on the latest business movements.
The body explained that There are rules in Spain this “allows us to find the perfect balance” between protecting companies, the country’s strategic interests and attracting foreign direct investment; and “within the framework of these rules, the possible operation will be analyzed when it occurs.”
When the operation is formalized, the head of the Ministry of Economy added, an analysis of how they are protected will begin. “strategic interests of Spain” and, “in this case, in Naturgy and in a particularly important sector,” where the country must be able to “sustain these investment efforts in the coming decades.”
Some statements that added to the dart launched shortly before by the first vice-president and Finance Minister Maria Jesús Monterowhich has expressed interest in the arrival of another buyer in the near future with “clean, transparent and, if possible, Spanish” capital.