The Sabadell leadership travels to Valencia to calm things down after leaving for Catalonia

The entity has appointed its two main managers: President Josep Oliu and CEO César González-Bueno. Both will be in Alicante and Valencia these two days to calm the waters there a bit after their departure and to guarantee that they will continue supporting the region. «The Banco Sabadell Group will increase its financial support to households and companies in the Valencian Community this year, with an increase of 1,000 million euros in financing. Its forecast is to grant more than 8.3 billion euros in loans to individuals, SMEs, businesses and the self-employed, which is 15% more than what was granted last year,” the entity reported.

What they seek to convey is long-term commitment to the community, despite having returned the headquarters to Catalonia, something that did not sit too well with some segments of the Valencian business community that criticized the movement. Likewise, there were businessmen who reminded Sabadell how they had supported it this last year against the takeover bid.

And losing support against BBVA’s takeover bid is not something that the Catalan entity wants or can afford. This two-day trip with the main managers is also framed in this context. The representatives of Banco Sabadell plan to meet with the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón; the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala; the president of the Alicante Chamber of Commerce, Carlos Baño; the president of the Valencia Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Chambers of the Valencian Community, José Vicente Morata; the president of the CEV, Salvador Navarro; the vice president and general secretary of AVE, Agnès Noguera and Diego Lorente, respectively; as well as the president of CEV Alicante, Joaquín Pérez. Likewise, they will also have meetings with other business associations and organizations in the region.

«In these meetings they will convey Banco Sabadell’s commitment to the economic and social development of the Valencian Community, and will explain that the decision to move the registered office to Sabadell has no effect on the clients, the offices or the professionals of the entity, which will continue in the same work centers. The strong roots of Banco Sabadell with the autonomous community have their origin in Alicante, where CAM was born, which joined the group in December 2011. This has led it to be one of the financial entities in the territory, with more than 200 offices and almost 2,300 employees, who manage 25% of the business of the bank’s entire commercial network in Spain,” the bank emphasizes.

Criticism of the decision to change headquarters

This being the case, Mazón himself went so far as to point out that they are in a “situation of weakness” and Sabadell “has decided to make some gesture or another to whom it corresponds.” Carlos Baño, president of the Alicante Chamber of Commercewhich spoke of “a more political than economic decision” that “may be due to the pact between the PSOE and Junts in Switzerland for the General State Budgets, in an attempt by the current Catalan Government to recover its strength and for this entity to be listed again in Catalonia. It also responds, he said, to an “attempt to save itself from the takeover bid” by BBVA.

In that sense, Baño recalled that the business community turned to the National Markets and Competition Commission to “defend” the interests of the company. Along the same lines, the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, was “disappointed and surprised” after the “unconditional support” that the entity has received from the people of Alicante. “Someone from the bank is going to have to give very precise explanations of what this operation is about and what interests are currently taking precedence over the clients and the Sabadell staff,” said Barcala. One aspect, that of employment, is the one that worries the unions the most.

More restrained was the president of the Business Confederation of the Valencian Community (CEV) and vice president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Salvador Navarro. Despite regretting the “significant loss” that the change of headquarters entails, he considered it “logical” given the normalization of legal security in Catalonia.