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BBVA and Banco Sabadell announced earlier this Friday the breakdown of the negotiations started 11 days ago to merge the two entities . Investors have responded to the news with the massive sale of Sabadell shares, after learning that BBVA’s offer was lower than expected by the Catalan bank.

However, the economic world does not consider the operation lost: the president of the CEOE employer, Antonio Garamendi, trusts that the negotiations will return to good course: “There are courtships that are later resumed,” he said in an interview on TVE.

“It has surprised us all”, recognized the leader of the entrepreneurs. “We were entering the church and we had no wedding. But there are courtships that are later resumed ”, he added.

Garamendi recalled that for the economic world and financial institutions “these mergers are on the right track”, referring to the numerous calls from national and European institutions to reduce the overcapacity of the banking system to create more solid entities.

In October, the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, insisted that “greater digitization and consolidation, national or cross-border, would strengthen the banks in the euro zone.”

Weeks before, after knowing the merger negotiations between Bankia and CaixaBank, the Governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, emphasized the need to reduce the number of entities to face the low profitability of the sector.

The CEOE chairman has avoided speculating on the reasons for the breakdown between Sabadell and BBVA, but he has recalled the importance that shareholders play in these merger processes.

“It seems that it has been due to a problem in the exchange and in the valuation of the shareholders. It is true that, regardless of management, the shareholders are in the bank and they have to be watched over ”.

But the most anticipated response of the day was that of the markets, which inflated the price of the two entities after the start of the negotiations. The Sabadell, which had seen its stock market value skyrocket by 32% in recent days, dropped 18% this Friday after the opening of the Ibex, a fall that moderated throughout the morning until falling around 13 %.

However, BBVA, which had recorded 19% in the same period , has responded well to the news of the suspension of the talks, gaining 2.6% on the Stock Market, ranking as the second fastest growing value in the world. Spanish index.

The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, Reyes Maroto, has also spoken, who has indicated that “he could not say” if the breakdown of the talks between BBVA and Sabadell for their merger is “good or bad news”.

But he has insisted on the need for Spain to have a solvent financial system, unlike what happened in the 2008 crisis. “Anything that strengthens the financial system is good.

The more robust the financial system, the better it will be for Spain ”, he told RNE. In any case, Maroto has stressed that the Spanish financial system is “one of the best in the world” and has valued the response and “great responsibility” that banking has shown in the health crisis, by putting itself at the service of society and help save businesses and jobs.

11 days after BBVA and Sabadell announced that they were opening official talks to merge, the two entities have broken the negotiations that were held until the early hours of this Friday.

The reaction of the Stock Exchange has been clear at the opening of the day: the Sabadell has set a first price at 0.33 euros, which represents a fall of 18% while it was inhibited from trading. After starting to fluctuate , it was down 12% .

For their part, BBVA shares started falling, but soon turned green with a rise of 2% , to 3.84 euros.

Without reaching the end of the technical analysis ( due diligence) , Sabadell considered that the price that BBVA was willing to pay did not value the potential of its business and the loss of independence that the sale entailed.

“Banco Sabadell has decided to end these talks as the parties have not reached an agreement on the eventual exchange ratio of the shares of both entities,” as the bank notified the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) this Friday .

For its part, BBVA has also informed the CNMV that “the talks related to a potential merger operation with Banco Sabadell have concluded without an agreement having been reached”, without giving further details.

After these two announcements, which will have deeply displeased supervisors who see mergers as a way to strengthen banks in the face of the crisis, now the key is the reaction of the markets.

The Sabadell has risen 32% since the announcement of the talks, although it started from very low prices. BBVA has risen 19% in this same period.

The valuation differences between the two banks were very relevant. BBVA had planned to make the payment through an exchange of shares, so it is likely that the president of Sabadell, Josep Oliu, would have demanded a vice-presidency and Carlos Torres, the head of BBVA, would have refused.

Financial sources commented this Thursday afternoon on the serious differences and mutual distrust that had arisen in the talks, to the point that they could end in rupture.

Regarding the vice-presidency of Oliu, these sources indicated that Torres did not want to introduce the rival executive due to the uncertainty that exists over the BBVA-Villarejo case . If Torres were to be imputed by the National Court and had to give up the presidency, it could end up in the hands of Oliu.

Sabadell assumes the rupture saying that the bank “will develop a new business plan that will prioritize the domestic market as a formula to increase efficiency in the use of the Group’s capital and resources, thus increasing profitability and creating value for shareholders. ”.

As for BBVA, if Sabadell’s plan did not come out, analysts believe that it could carry out a buyback of its own shares to boost the price, as well as expand its presence in the capital of Garanti, its Turkish subsidiary, of which it controls 40 %. However, this option would increase risk in a very geopolitically unstable region.

The Bank of Spain warned of this danger a few weeks ago, which is why it was more in favor of the merger with Sabadell. It should not be forgotten that the CEO, Onur Genç, is Turkish and held this position at Garanti.

In this return to the origins, Sabadell insists in the note that “without prejudice to the fact that the main axes and objectives of the plan will be made public during the first quarter of 2021, Banco de Sabadell is in a position to anticipate that it will contemplate.

Among other measures, the expansion of the efficiency and transformation program in the retail market ( retail banking) in Spain ―with a neutral impact on capital― and will analyze with its advisors strategic alternatives for creating value with respect to the Group’s international assets, including TSB “.

In an act of realism, Sabadell admits the poor future of TSB, which has had serious computer problems that led to the temporary blocking of accounts. Additionally, UK regulatory requirements have delayed the bank’s return to profits. The market values ​​this entity at zero.

Finally, Sabadell claims to have “a solid franchise in Spain and is the leader in the customer satisfaction index in the SME segment”.

The Catalan entity announces that it will focus “on these segments with the highest added value and profitability” and that it will implement its new plan “improving both its efficiency and the organic generation of capital”. The market will be the one to judge the consequences of this divorce.

The European Central Bank could lift the veto on banking dividends next year if banks’ balance sheets are strong enough to overcome the coronavirus pandemic .

BBVA, like Santander. Joins the dividend car and plans to improve results

The final decision will depend on how conservative the banks’ internal models and their provisioning are, in addition to the ECB’s vision of the trajectory of its capital, according to the entity’s member, Yves Mersch , in an interview. with the ‘Financial Times’.

The decision is important for the two giants of Spanish banking. A few months ago, Santander became the first major bank to announce the return of dividends as soon as the ECB allowed, and BBVA joined the bandwagon a few days later.

The ECB acknowledges that euro zone banks have faced the pandemic with a stronger capital position than in the 2008 crisis. However, Mersch points out that it would be inconsistent for them to take advantage of relief measures deployed by regulators to pay dividends .

It will be very difficult to maintain the veto on dividends beyond this year, Mersch acknowledged. It is a decision that creates legal uncertainty.

However, the ECB will look closely at the circumstances in which the return to the dividend occurs and will be very conservative in relation to the resumption of payments compared to the amount they had before the crisis.

The ECB recognizes that the dividend veto creates legal uncertainty and will lift it if balance sheets are strong.

As soon as the pandemic broke out, the ECB asked the banks not to pay dividends and to concentrate on reinforcing their capital to face the crisis in better conditions. After the summer, the ECB began to send signals about a possible withdrawal of the veto on dividends.

With interest rates at historic lows, margins on the decline and non-performing loans on the rise, the regulator’s decision was a heavy burden for financial institutions.

In the third quarter results it was already possible to verify the significant effort made by the banks to reinforce their capital levels and increase their provisions. In short, the vast majority did their homework. Yet another argument for the ECB to lift the veto.

For Spanish financial institutions, the return of dividends could be an important catalyst, which would add to the process of sectoral consolidation opened after the merger of Caixabank and Bankia. The punishment has been very harsh. The two giants, Santader and BBVA, reached their two-decade lows.

The approval of Abengoa’s restructuring plan was left up in the air after the resignation of the board of directors. Now, Gonzalo Urquijo and his team are negotiating with Abengoashares , the minority that fired them, a strategy to carry out the rescue.

Conversations flow, as reported to finanzas.com sources familiar with the negotiations, and recent agreements, postponement of the judicial confrontation and acceptance of new candidates for the board, are a sign of the approach.

Although the latest news about the company is only the tip of the iceberg and underwater the biggest differences appear and where the meetings are centered.

Minorities request a new assessment of the financial situation of the company and the assets that compose it, considering that Covid-19 , an argument that the company used to request a rescue and calibrate the status of the group, is not valid.

The fact is that in order to clean up the accounts, Abengoa has had a divestment plan since 2016 with which to pay suppliers and creditors .

Since its inception and until last year, it allocated 870 million euros from the sale of Atlantica Yield to repay one of its debt issues, New Money.

According to the information provided by the company, Abengoa has in its portfolio 12 assets from which it can obtain returns and these are included in the rescue plan to amortize the support of creditors or make payments in payment to suppliers.

The assets are spread over Spain , the United States , India , Latin America and Africa . These include plants in Algeria , Ghana , India and Mexico .

On the other hand, they are pending collections or litigation in Spain , Kenya , the United States or Poland and awaiting government approvals in countries such as Peru .

The company insists that just by winning the international arbitrations it has open it can pocket more than 1,000 million euros, which would be a real boost for the viability of the multinational.

Abengoashares requests a new audit
This plan is not enough for minority shareholders and they insist on having access to the audit carried out by KPMG to know the status of the accounts. To date, the company has withheld this report on the grounds of confidentiality.

Abengoashares also requests another audit for the 2019 accounts, which are not submitted to the National Securities Market Commission ( CNMV ) with the signature of a consultant.

In this sense, Marcos de Quinto , the candidate of small investors for the presidency of Abengoa, pointed out in an interview with Finanzas.com that the Sevillian hides information regarding the status of the group.

Despite this statement, De Quinto shows a conciliatory attitude with Urquijo, another example of smoothing the rough edges between both positions and the objective, according to the former executive vice president of Coca Cola Company , is to speed up the signing of an agreement as much as possible.

Even, he pointed out to finance.com, they would be willing to renounce part of their requests in order to achieve an agreement that is as favorable as possible for all parties.

Of course, the objectives of increasing Abengoa’s position in Abenewco 1 and that the current parent continues to command the future of the group seem, for the moment, the red lines of the negotiation.

And it is that it will be in the control of the subsidiaries where the control of the group will reside. The desire of Abengoashares is that the advice of Abengoa and Abenewco 1 be the same .

Urquijo’s dismissal did not mean that he and his council also left the management of Abenewco 1, the recipient of the rescue, and therefore, the one that currently brings together the group’s activity, since Abengoa has been emptied of activity.

By preventing a new board from voting at the extraordinary meeting, the company managed to get the incoming team to convene a universal meeting for Abenewco 1 and resolve this situation.

To date, Abengoa maintains a position of 77.25% in Abenewco 1, so De Quinto’s triumph would have allowed him to also take over the position in Abenewco to command a new negotiation with suppliers, creditors, banks, ICO , etc. Cesce and the Junta de Andalucía .

But now we have to wait for the extraordinary meeting in December to appoint a new board in the old Abengoa. With this assembly, Urquijo intended to close the role of the Sevillian in the new group with three independent directors .

Now, the minority have proposed their own, as a previous step to the appointment of De Quinto and subsequent call for a universal meeting.

As the power play continues, the company’s bailout remains unsigned. Billions are in the air and the injection of up to 250 million from the ICO from the IBEX 35 bank , except for Sabadell , plus Credit Agricole and 300 million guarantees from Cesce are not signed.

A pact that could be blown up if retailers succeed and take root in the need for Abengoa to continue as the predominant company and the one listed on Abenewco 1.

And, according to the company, the signatories of the viability plan would only accept the agreement that is already over the week and that they will be inflexible in the face of an increase in the position of what would be the old matrix.

The pandemic has aggravated the low capacity for emancipation that young people already dragged from the last economic crisis in 2008, according to the latest report from the Emancipation Observatory presented this Thursday by the Youth Council of Spain (CJE).

Despite the fact that the second semester of 2019 was already traumatic, the confinement and growth of youth unemployment in the first six months of 2020 lowered the rate to lows at the beginning of the century: only 17.3% of Spaniards aged between 16 and During this period, 29 years lived away from the home of his parents or a relative.

You have to go back to 2002 to find a lower percentage, and the future does not look promising: “Without quality employment, it will not be possible to reach the expected rates,” said Elena Ruiz, president of the CJE,

Adrià Junyent, vice president of the Council, has related the low emancipation with the job insecurity of the population under 30 years of age.

“We young people have suffered more from ERTE – 29.6%, compared to 24% of the rest of the population – with the loss of wages that this implies.” Worse still is the employment rate, where only one in three of Spaniards between 16 and 29 years old has a job, and it drops to 18.2% between 16 and 24.

In addition, youth unemployment is double that of among the rest of the population, 30%. “We have suffered the biggest rise in unemployment this year [compared to other age groups], 4.8 percentage points more,” Junyent added.

Women continue to be much more likely to become independent: 20.8% of them do so, compared to 14% of men. However, this year the number of emancipated women has fallen slightly more than men, as they have been more affected by the pandemic.

“They have gone more to the ERTE, have a higher rate of inactivity and concentrate more part-time,” has detailed the political scientist of the CJE.

The crisis has also hit the population that only has primary education the hardest, due to their job insecurity. In this group, emancipation has fallen 2.3 percentage points, to 23%, between January and June 2020. Immigrants are the next most affected. 34.6% live independently, 3.4 points less than in 2019.

On the other hand, Joffre López, author of the study, sociologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​has highlighted the ironic situation that has occurred this year, in which there has been a reduction in the price of the real estate market that has not been taken advantage of .

“For young people, even though prices have dropped, the chances of emancipation are even lower than last year.”

In this way, in rent the prices start from 900 euros on average, an average mortgage from 600 euros and a shared flat from 269 euros. But with an average salary of 973 euros among young Spaniards, the rent would represent 93% of their net salary, “above the reasonable 30% [established by various organizations]” , López pointed out.

A mortgage would be 56% and share 27.7%. In the case of the mortgage, in addition, the entry and taxes should be added, “the equivalent of three full years of salary.”

Compared with previous years, emancipation reached minimums in 1997 —with 15% – and maximums of 26% in 2008.

Since then, the figure has decreased until this year, when the decline has been accentuated by the health situation , which has led to the deepest drop in emancipation since 1988 (1.3 points less from 18.7% in 2019).

By Communities, the Basque Country is the region where more young people have returned to live with their parents in the first half of the year (three points less in the emancipation rate), followed by Extremadura (2.5 points less) and Asturias (2, 1 point less).

Clarks, the iconic British shoe brand , may have its days numbered as a family business. After staying at the helm for 195 years, the Clarks, who own 84.8% of the company, are ready to hand over control to LionRock Capital, a Hong Kong-based venture capital fund.

Its managers have committed to injecting 100 million pounds (111.7 million euros) to try to float a business that had already been making water before the commercial bump generated by the pandemic.

Founded in 1825 by brothers James and Cyrus Clark in the small town of Street, south-west Britain, the firm has been under the command of a traditional , discreet family line with Quaker roots for almost two centuries .

Despite the international expansion and growth of the company, the Clarks never moved the headquarters and their hometown benefited for years from the shoemaker’s prosperity. At least until 2006, when production was completely delocalized.

Today, its offices are still on the street, but the vast majority of its products come from Vietnam, Cambodia, India and China.

The difficult situation in which the company finds itself has been leaving a trace on the streets of Street.

Among the most recent examples is the robotic-assisted plant the Clarks tried to return to production with on British soil in 2017. It was closed less than two years later for failing to meet targets.

The same fate befell the Shoe Museum last year, where Clarks had been exhibiting relics for 70 years, such as James and Cyrus’ first creation: slippers made from scraps left over from their sheepskin rug business.

But the firm’s challenges are too great to allow for sentimentality. “Clarks is in survival mode,” says Nicholas Found, Senior Analyst for Retail Week, a publication specializing in the UK retail industry. “Their profits before taxes have been falling for five consecutive years .So this problem expands beyond the pandemic,” explains the expert by phone.

The footwear brand had a turnover of 1,469 million pounds (1,640 million euros) last year, which represented an annual fall of 4.6%, according to the Statista portal.

The end result was losses of 83 million pounds (93 million euros), more than double the red numbers of 31 million pounds that they showed from the accounts of the previous year.

The company announced 900 layoffs around the world last May, in addition to another 170 made in December 2019. Although the firm insists that there will be no “immediate” closures of premises and that its employees will continue to receive their salaries , has already opened a consultation period, the first step towards a collective redundancy, with its 4,000 employees in the UK.

For Found, the Clarks case is a good example of the challenges faced by “old-school” British brands, which include the emergence of e-commerce and the dilemma of whether to maintain their traditional stores. Internet sales are gaining ground in the United Kingdom and before the pandemic they accounted for 20% of the total, according to the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics.

With the confinement, they reached 32.8% and now they are around 26%. This and the rise of teleworking are accelerating the crisis that the British high street was already experiencing, which between January and August 2020 suffered the destruction of almost 125,000 jobs, according to the Center for Retail Research.

A situation that led another icon, the department store chain Marks & Spencer, to register its first half of losses this year since its IPO in 1926.

“What the covid-19 has done is to test the accounts of results to the point where these historic businesses are fighting for their lives, ”says Found.

One of the main drawbacks, according to the expert, is the excess of establishments, with a surplus of 20%, according to a study by Retail Week and the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Fixed costs such as renting the premises are another heavy burden.

It is not surprising that LionRock Capital has made the signing of an agreement with Clarks creditors to lower the rent of its stores in the United Kingdom and Ireland as a condition of the operation.

The proposal includes that the price is no longer fixed and is calculated according to the billing of each establishment, reducing to zero in 60 of its 320 stores. An “absolute necessity,” Philip de Klerk, the company’s acting chief financial officer, said in a press release.

This company voluntary agreement (CVA), a kind of pre-bankruptcy for creditors, must be approved in December by 75% of them.

Renters are a long way from reaching the 26% needed to block it, according to the British business premises association, the British Property Federation (BPF), which accuses the shoe brand of abusing this legal mechanism.

“The owners are the only creditors that will be affected by the CVA of Clarks, since they represent a small percentage of the vote and cannot influence the result,” lamented in an email Melanie Leech, chief executive of the BPF.

Criticisms also come from the labor sector. Gareth Lowe, regional head of the Unite union, lamented in the publication This is Money that the Clarks received “lavish dividends” of 13.4 million pounds during two years in which the company added losses of 114.2 million. “This calls into question the corporate priorities of the Clarks,” he said.

The firm is confident that the entry of LionRock Capital will serve to “revitalize” the brand and “position it for future sustainable growth in the long term,” it said in a press release.

The Hong Kong fund has stakes in Didi, known as the “Chinese Uber,” Inter Milan and Hailo, another taxi app. According to LionRock Capital founder Daniel Tseung, the investment “will not only strengthen Clarks’ position as one of the world’s most recognized brands, but will also allow expansion into key emerging markets.”

The Clarks, who together with the other shareholders will vote in December for LionRock Capital to be the majority shareholder, will continue to have a stake in the business, although the percentage has not yet been made public.

Currently, the company that created the Wallabees boots and moccasins has 10,000 employees in more than 100 markets, including Spain, where there are 34 stores that, according to the company, will not be affected by the operation.