Banco Sabadell believes that the takeover bid and merger that BBVA wants to do about the Catalan entity will mean a cut of 4,000 jobs in the resulting bank, according to the CEO of the entity, César González-Bueno, in the presentation of third quarter results.
In this regard, González-Bueno explained last week that this figure “has been deduced” by the entity itself with the data that BBVA has included in the takeover prospectus published in the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, for its acronym). in English).
Specifically, BBVA has estimated cost savings of around 300 million euros due to the departure of people. “If you do the inverse of the historical personnel cost of the departures, it gives you 4,000. We have deduced it, it is like two and two equals four,” César González-Bueno said last Thursday.
This is information that, however, has been on the table since the announcement of the operation, before the cost savings that BBVA estimated were known. Already on April 30, for example, the EAE Business School estimated that the merger that BBVA had initially proposed to the board of directors of Sabadell (a proposal that was rejected and led to an announcement of a takeover bid for the shareholders of the Catalan bank) could mean a cut of around 4,000 people, giving as an example that, in the case of the merger between CaixaBank and Bankia, the departure was about 6,000 employees.
In August, CCOO and UGT sent a letter to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) where they estimated a loss of between 7,684 and 10,567 jobs due to the operation, as well as the closure of between 589 and 883 offices in Spain. with a “special” impact in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Asturias and Galicia.
For its part, BBVA has defended on several occasions that this operation is not designed to reduce costs, but “to grow” and has avoided giving calculations on the job cuts that it could entail, since it is something that must be agreed upon with unions when both entities are integrated.
Furthermore, he highlighted that this operation will be an “opportunity” for the staff of both banks, since it would become part of “something bigger, an international organization that would allow them to work in other geographies. There are many career opportunities in this new atmosphere”.
Trump’s victory could complicate the takeover bid
On the other hand, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections could complicate the takeover bid that BBVA wants to launch for Sabadell due to the exposure that the bank chaired by Carlos Torres has to the Mexican market, where it obtains close to half of its profits, according to market analyst Manuel Pinto.
“The tariffs that Trump will impose will impact Mexican export companies, which will have a direct impact on BBVA due to the companies it finances in that context, but also due to the reduction in the country’s general economic activity. This implies a lower future value of BBVA, which implicitly means that the takeover premium is reduced,” says Pinto.
On the other hand, for Renta 4 banking analyst Nuria Álvarez, she believes that “too many repercussions” are being assumed about Trump’s victory that are currently difficult to observe. He explains that Spanish banks are falling on the stock market due to the cut in bond yields and because more aggressive reductions from the European Central Bank (ECB) are being discounted, given a possible slowdown in the eurozone economy due to tariffs on exports that Trump could approve for the region.
He also considers that Trump’s victory does not have to be “bad” for Mexico or for BBVA’s business in the region, since in the previous Trump government, from 2017 to 2021, the bank gained business in the country.
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