Open war between Sabadell and BBVA: Oliu accuses Torres of violating takeover laws

“This is war, this is already war,” one of the sources consulted said on Thursday Free market after the press conference Carlos Torres, President of BBVA and its CEO Onur Genç, after a presentation in front of the CNMV hours before the first hostile takeover to occur in the Spanish banking sector since Banco Bilbao introduced Banesto in 1987. Torres did the rest yesterday. The President of BBVA not only announced Hostile takeover according to the regulations, but rather called an appearance with analysts, a press release, extensive documentation and a press conference with journalists. He was an absolute star on Thursday until almost noon. And amid the argumentative artillery he used to defend his hostile takeover proposal, he said it could not be agreed because “when he was going to go to Sabadell to present the merger proposal there was a leak and the meeting could not take place.” According to the BBVA president, it was an interested leak that ruined his apparently good intentions. Market sources interviewed believe that Torres’s movement directly points to Sabadell as responsible for the downfall of his “good intentions.”.

However, the President of Sabadell Josep Oliu, prepared an answer for him, and he arrived when night had already fallen. Banco Sabadell has sent a notice to the CNMV accusing BBVA of “violating” the takeover regime by providing “incomplete data,” the organization chaired by Josep Oliu said.

Banco Sabadell accused BBVA of violating the takeover regime by providing “incomplete” data that could affect the marketThis was reported by the company to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). Sabadell said in a note that the information released to analysts and journalists BBVA provided details not included in the information sent to Sabadell and the market.. In a note, he denounces the existence of “documentation not included in the announcement” and adds that this “violates Article 32.1 of Royal Decree 1066/2007 of July 27 on the regime of offers for the acquisition of securities and in general on the introduction of incomplete data that could affect the market .

Without specifying what data is in question, Sabadell forwarded this complaint to the CNMV with the intention that “the market has complete and transparent information, and an orderly and correct process is guaranteed.“.

At the moment, it appears that the takeover bid for BBVA is opposed both by the takeover bid and by the government itself, which yesterday did not hesitate to come out strongly against the operation. The Valencian Generalitat also did the same. The banking regulator, the Bank of Spain, also spoke out against excessive concentration in the banking sector. Only some Sabadell shareholders, according to journalists, would view the operation positively.