The government’s takeover of a 10% stake will force Telefónica to publish its agreements with Navantia, RTVE and the rest of the Sepi Group.

The entry of the State Society for Industrial Participation (Sepi) with 10% of the capital will have the side effect that Telefonica’s transactions with the public sector will have a new degree of transparency since, as a major shareholder, they will have to go through the operator’s Board of Directors and are published after the end of the year in the operator’s annual reports communications.

It’s because Capital Companies Law establishes obligations and mechanisms to avoid conflicts of interest between companies, their directors and shareholders in so-called “related transactions” and aimed at ensuring the transparency of transactions of this type.

Thus, in the case of Telefónica, company rules require that The Audit and Control Committee prepares a positive report, which must subsequently be approved by the Board of Directors. on these transactions with shareholders. However, this type of procedure is not alien to the board of directors of Telefónica, which, with numerous businesses in which the two main shareholders have seats on the board of directors (BBVA and CaixaBank), is accustomed to approving such transactions. more than 50 in the last year, and for which there are some exceptions for ordinary businesses, such as telephone line contracting.

However, in the case of Sepi, the volume of entities represented is higher, since only holding company It has controlling stakes in fifteen companies, many of them have a million-dollar business with Telefónica. This is the case Mail in which Telefónica is one of the main suppliers of Correos Telecom, its mobile operator, or Navantiawith which Telefónica signed an important agreement in 2021 to develop solutions in the field of cybersecurity and cyber protection.

The list of organizations subject to coverage of these connections also includes state media such as RTVE and EFE and other companies such as Trags and Junosa. Similarly, the group may be forced to summarize in its annual report the amount of business it had in 2023 from The main department of the state, since Sepi is 100% controlled by him, which, for example, Indra and Redeya do.and this would make it much easier to estimate the amount of revenue the company receives from the public sector.

UNDEFINED DETAIL

However, until Telefónica’s annual results are published in February 2025, it will be difficult to know how detailed the information provided to shareholders will be, as there is a wide variety of ways of reporting this type of transaction among Ibex companies. .

The Grifols accounting scandal stems from a lack of detail in reporting the group’s dealings with a Scranton company in which members of the blood products company’s founding family invested.

Among those who participated in Sepi’s Ibex 35, these differences can also be seen in the thoroughness of the reporting. Yes, sure Redeya describes in detail each government agency with which it has reached an agreement during the year, Indra, on the other hand, having a much larger volume of government procurement, limits himself to summing up the results in his annual report.