BBVA president confident of ‘success’ of takeover bid for Banco Sabadell

BBVA President Carlos Torres said in Bilbao on Friday that he is “fully” confident in the success of the takeover bid for Banco Sabadell, as it is an “extremely attractive” bid and its aim is to create a bank “stronger, more competitive and more profitable”.

This operation is also “a clear betting on Spain and its small and medium-sized enterprises” and Torres believes that BBVA’s experience with previous similar integrations supports them and allows them to be confident in the success of the integration, which “clearly” creates value for everyone: shareholders, customers, employees and society as a whole.

During his speech at extraordinary shareholders meeting in which the capital increase necessary to carry out the takeover bid for Banco Sabadell was approved, with 96.04% of the votes, Torres has shown himself convinced of the strategic rationale of the operation and has defended that he would give the shareholders of the Catalan group “the power to choose.”

“We hope that they will appreciate the strategic sense of the operation and decide to participate with us in this great project for the future,” he added after explaining that the offer will be launched once the approval is received from the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). ) and stressing that BBVA’s approach has been “friendly” from the beginning and it always will be.

For Torres, the combination of BBVA with Banco Sabadell is “the most attractive industrial project in European banking” and he has stressed that scale is increasingly relevant to undertake the high and growing investments in technology.

In summary, the aim of the operation, in his view, is to build a “stronger, more competitive and profitable” bank, which strengthens BBVA’s presence in the market, allowing it to obtain significant synergies, with cost savings estimated at €850 million before taxes.