Earthquake on the Ibex: Álvarez-Pallete is going to stop being the president of Telefónica. The Government wants to relieve the company’s main executive to replace, as ABC has reported, Marc Murtra, until now president of Indra.
SEPI—the public investment company, dependent on the Ministry of Finance—is the one behind this movement, which has the approval of the Saudis at STC.
Pallete’s departure is the culmination of a process that began when STC Group announced, in September 2023, the purchase of a 9.9% stake in the Spanish telecom company. In response, the Council of Ministers ordered the acquisition of Telefónica shares. Thus, in May 2024 the State became the main shareholder of the company.
Main shareholders of Telefónica
The decision to relieve Pallete, which must be approved by the Board of Directors, requires that the rest of the shareholders give their approval.
SEPI is the main shareholder of Telefónica. Or what is the same, it is the State that has the largest part of the company. It currently owns 10% of the shares after the purchase order by the Sánchez Government, after a disbursement of some 2,284 million euros.
The second shareholder is STC Group, which stands for Saudi Telecommunications Company, which owns 9.9% of the shares after the purchase in September 2023, an operation that amounted to 2.1 billion euros. This company is owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
The same amount – 9.9% – is held by Criteria, the investment company of the “la Caixa” Foundation, owner of CaixaBank.
The owners of Telefónica
The rest of the main shareholders are Blackrock, Larry Fink’s investment fund, one of the largest in the world; and BBVA, the Spanish bank, which has 4.84%.
The remaining shares are in the hands of small investors.
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