Pescanova minority shareholders eye BBVA and Bankia stakes
Pescanova minority shareholders want to increase their 20% stake by acquiring shares from BBVA and Bankia, El Confidencial reported, without citing any sources.
The group of Pescanova shareholders think that BBVA’s 6.25% stake in Nueva Pescanova and the 4.6% stake held by Bankia will soon be up for sale, the Spanish-language report said.
The group of shareholders is pushing the Spanish securities regulator CNMV to allow trading of Pescanova shares now that a long and complex court-supervised debt restructuring has been completed. Pescanova’s industrial shareholders hope that the company will return to the stock market in 2H16, the report said.
BBVA has shown little interest in becoming a long-term investor in the business, the report noted, while the government-controlled bank Bankia is compelled to sell all of its industrial holdings as per rules established by the European Commission.
Pescanova key lenders, known as the G-6 group, control 80% of the capital as follows: Caixabank 15.6%; Banco Sabadell 14.5%; Banco Popular 9.2%; Abanca 8.2% and the said stakes held by BBVA and Bankia. BBVA holds EUR 41m in Pescanova debt, and Bankia EUR 16m, the report noted.
The G6 have an initial agreement to maintain their Pescanova stakes of three years, but that could be shortened, the report said.
Among the group of Pescanova minority shareholders looking to recover control of the company are the funds Cartesian, Broadbill and Luxempart, and the Spanish entrepreneurs Demetrio Carceller, Carolina Masaveu and Jose Antonio Pérez-Nievas. Former president Manuel Fernández Sousa, is also an investor.
El Confidencial