The stock exchange buys Oliu's move
Sabadell bank agrees a 13% drop is as good as it gets
BarcelonaYesterday, the senior managers of the Sabadell bank felt real anguish during the time leading up to the opening of the Madrid Stock Exchange. The bold move they had decided on Thursday evening and announced on Friday at 7 am at the National Securities Market Commission had only one judge to decide whether it could go well or not: the markets.
Finally, at 9 am the Ibex-35 woke up, and soon some very encouraging news arrived: the fall was around 12% and the shares were better than they had been before the announcement of the start of the talks with BBVA, on Monday 16 November. When closing the market on November 13th the share was worth 33 cents, and the bank's management took this figure as an indicator of whether or not the markets would buy the decision taken by Oliu and his leadership.
The oscillations were brief and throughout the day the bank did not enter a dangerous zone, that is, anything less than this figure. When closing, the stock was at 34 cents. A small victory for an entity that in recent years has only received resentment from the hand of Íbex-35.
The Catalan bank announced yesterday that it wants to focus on its own project, which will involve further staff cuts, in addition to the sales of TSB and its Mexican subsidiary. With all this, it hopes to be able to walk alone after the breakdown of negotiations with BBVA. Financial sources do not see this path as unusual: "If there are smaller entities that work, why shouldn't Sabadell, which has more of a brand and better positioning, be able to do so? -asked a source close to the Catalan bank. No one wonders if Liberbank is viable", remarked this source.
The Bank of Spain remains calm
Sources from the Bank of Spain reacted calmly to the news. "Supervisors do not make decisions about mergers, they only see that they make sense and that the resulting institutions are better than the sum of both of them separately", explained a spokesman.
The truth is that both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Spain, or the Spanish government itself, have sent recent messages of support for the mergers, in a dynamic that began even before this newspaper reported the negotiation between CaixaBank and Bankia.
The Bank of Spain added that the situation of Sabadell has nothing to do with the situation experienced by Popular in 2017. This entity fell after a sharp drop in the stock market, it is true, but in its case it was accompanied by a devastating factor: the massive withdrawal of deposits, which drained its liquidity and threatened to bankrupt it. "Sabadell has no confidence problem and the situation is far from being remotely similar", reported this spokesman.
