You must decide whether to accept or reject the offer, or whether to request an upgrade
BARCELONA, 6 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The board of directors of Banco Sabadell will meet this Monday to evaluate the merger by absorption offer presented by BBVA, as explained by sources familiar with the meeting to Europa Press.
The bank must decide whether to accept the offer presented, reject it or open negotiations and demand an improvement in the conditions offered, according to ‘La Vanguardia’.
BBVA announced on April 30 to the National Securities Market Commission that it had presented a merger by absorption offer to the entity led by Josep Oliu.
The offer proposes the exchange of one newly issued BBVA share for every 4.83 shares of Banco Sabadell, which represents a premium of 30% compared to the closing stock market value on April 29.
The offer presented specifies that it would propose the incorporation as non-executive directors to the Board of Directors of BBVA of three members of the current Board of Directors of Banco Sabadell, chosen by common agreement between both parties.
In addition, the resulting entity would maintain the current headquarters of Banco Sabadell in Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona) as one of the operational headquarters of the BBVA brand.
In any case, “the use of the Banco Sabadell brand could be maintained, jointly with the BBVA brand, in those regions or businesses in which it may have a relevant commercial interest.”
Regarding possible workforce adjustments, BBVA indicated that “in the integration of the workforce, the principles of professional competence and merit would be respected in all cases, without the adoption of traumatic measures or measures that singularly affect employees originating from one of the two entities.”
In market capitalization, the group resulting from this merger would reach a market value of 73,000 million euros, according to the current price of both entities, a short distance from Banco Santander, which just exceeds 74,000 million euros, and almost double what CaixaBank capitalizes (37.5 billion)
This is not the first time that both banks have had this operation on the table: already in 2020, BBVA and Sabadell studied a merger, although they finally ended up rejecting it because they did not reach an agreement on the share exchange ratio.
Both banks were then negotiating for 11 days from when they confirmed the talks until they finally considered them broken. BBVA tried to undertake this operation after selling its business in the United States to the bank PNC Financial for 11.6 billion dollars.
If this eventual operation were to be reissued, it would mean putting an end to the other possible transaction that had dominated market rumors in recent weeks: a possible acquisition of Unicaja by Banco Sabadell, something that the Catalan bank has denied on several occasions.
The entity resulting from an eventual integration of Sabadell into BBVA would have global assets of 1,037 billion euros (801,690 million euros from BBVA and 236,135 million euros from Banco Sabadell), with data at the end of the first quarter of the year. If only the assets in Spain are considered, the resulting bank would have assets valued at 637,461 million euros (452,227 million euros from BBVA and 185,234 million from Banco Sabadell).
In the same way, the bank globally would have 7,326 offices (5,912 from BBVA and 1,414 from Sabadell), while in Spain the physical presence would be 3,084 offices (1,881 from BBVA and 1,203 from Sabadell).
Regarding employees, the joint group would have a workforce of 140,776 workers, of which 41,634 would be in Spain.
The interest in this possible operation is communicated just when both banks have just informed the market of their first quarter results. Banco Sabadell obtained a net profit of 308 million euros between January and March, 50.4% more; while BBVA recorded net profits of 2.2 billion euros, 19.1% more than a year before.
The total income (gross margin) of both entities was 9,662 million euros until the month of March, 1,444 million in the case of Sabadell and 8,218 million euros for BBVA.
