The Australian Fund IFM already has the approval of the government to move forward with its OPA over 22.69% Naturgy. The last Council of Ministers before the Summer Paron has given green light to the operation and has established the conditions he will have to meet over the next five years, taking into account the "essential role" that the company performs in the Spanish energy sector and its Position as "critical and key operator".
This has been defined by the third Vice President of the Executive, Teresa Ribera, when he enumerated the demands of this "singular operation" that affects a strategic company in a strategic sector, whose contribution "will be essential for the energy transformation that the country addresses."
Among other things, the Government requires IFM to maintain the registered office and the effective management and management headquarters in Spain, as well as preserve "a significant part of the group's staff" in the country.
In addition, it forces you to establish a "prudent dividend policy" that allows you to undertake the investment policy linked to the energy transition and an external debt policy aimed at "maintaining the credit rating of investment degree of society and allowing the ratio of indebtedness of its subsidiaries regulated in Spain are not higher "to those recommended by the National Commission of Competition Markets (CNMC).
Teresa Ribera has made it clear that the intention of the executive with all these conditions is to guarantee the stability of Naturgy, its protection and "the good management of regulated assets and critical infrastructures" to achieve materializing the objectives in terms of fair energy transition, " The maintenance of employment and financial economic stability of the company ".
The rest of the demands go through the Company to be able to disseminate the annual and semi-annual financial information market and to prevent it from supporting any proposal for a negotiation exclusion from the Society of Spanish Bags "unless that negotiation does not reach dissemination , frequency or sufficient hiring volume for proper price formation ".
In addition, IFM will not be able to support any divestment proposal that involves the loss of control of Naturgy's subsidiaries, that is, it will not be able to support any proposal that is not reflected in the Strategic Plan 2022-2025 of the Company that is presented to the Council of Administration or to the General Shareholders' Meeting of the Company and that implies that the latter loses control of the subsidiaries that may endanger the proper functioning of the distribution and transportation activities of electricity and natural gas in Spain.
"Failure to comply with these conditions will take place in its case to the revocation of foreign investment authorization and will constitute a very serious infringement in the terms provided for in the law," Ribera remembered.
The approval of the OPA by the Government is one of the last steps that were required for the operation to go ahead. Now it will be the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) that has to give the approval, something that could occur in the coming weeks, and then the main shareholders of Naturgy -Criteria Caixa, and the CVC and GIP funds- will have Get according to IFM to decipize the new composition of the Company's Board of Directors and its next steps.
Date Of Update: 03 August 2021, 17:38
