Biographies of bankers, when they exist, are usually authoritative. Its power eliminates the option of having it written without your consent. That of the president of Sabadell, Josep Oliu, is no exception. The author is Raquel Lander and the title is The strategic banker (The Book Sphere, 2014). In any case, the presentation is very accurate because the same tactical intuition that guided Oliu to convert a minor entity founded by the industrial fabric of the area into one of the main banks in Spain is what has now helped him to get the strategy right and manage to escape, once again, the BBVA takeover bid.
Those who have followed him throughout his career confirm that the president of Sabadell is one of those who does not allow himself to be carried away by impulses. The journalist Josep Maria Ureta defined him a long time ago as someone who intuits what he wants and who does not improvise how to obtain it. He did not improvise the transfer of the bank's headquarters to Alicante during the process nor his return to Catalonia when the operation led by Carlos Torres was already underway.
Oliu says that he does not talk about politics but he did not improvise either when in June 2014 he proposed creating “a kind of right-wing Podemos”, which would end up being the late Ciudadanos. Those were the times when he complained that PP and PSOE were “not at all representatives of business interests.” A decade later, the entire political spectrum, from right to left, including independentists, employers and unions, have rowed in favor of their interests.
The former president of the United States Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan explained that banks not only control money, but also ideas. And during these 17 months, a time that has not only seemed long to its shareholders, the one who has set the framework has been Sabadell, despite BBVA's efforts to convince Catalan social agents, journalists and shareholders of the benefits of its takeover bid. Not to mention the kind advertising campaigns with which both BBVA and Sabadell have showered many media outlets.
Nobody knows who leaked, on April 30, 2024, the British network Sky NewsBBVA's intentions. Both entities deny being behind that information. What is known is what happened next: it had an impact on the Catalan election campaign and achieved unprecedented political unanimity. Nothing has managed to put Illa and Puigdemont, ERC and Comuns in such agreement. They all flatly rejected the takeover bid from day one. The same as employers and unions, on a front that is equally unusual and unusual.
The Government, aligned with Illa, also showed its rejection from the beginning, with the always cautious tone of Minister Carlos Body and with the more frequent vehemence of Vice President Yolanda Díaz. Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has tried to tiptoe around, and the topic has come up every time he has been in meetings with Catalan businessmen, those from which many, after listening to him, come out increasingly more disconcerted. “I like banking competition,” he stated at this year's Cercle d'Economia conference, in which the topic was only the single issue: the takeover bid.
Feijóo did something else: attack the public consultation that the Government pulled out of nowhere to the delight of Sabadell and all those who rejected the BBVA operation. The leader of the PP called it “frivolous” and he was somewhat right since the only objective was for all those who were against the OPA, “citizens, associations and organizations”, to say that they were against it in order to reinforce the Government's position. And that was what happened even though Brussels did not like that the Spanish Executive had put so many obstacles in place to interfere in the operation.
The OPA has obtained unpublished images such as those of the president of BBVA and the president of Sabadell on tour on some televisions and radios. Torres emphatically assuring that they would not raise the offer (they did so on September 22) and Oliu appealing to the heart of the Catalan business fabric and those small shareholders who are also his clients.
“Presi, presi,” chanted the employees who were waiting for him this Friday at the entrance to the Sabadell headquarters in Sant Cugat. Oliu celebrated his victory with them but also with President Illa. He went to the Palau de la Generalitat after acknowledging that he was “relieved” by a result that he did not expect to be so “forceful.”
Sabadell resists although the question is for how long. It is likely that strategist Oliu is already thinking about a new plan to try to protect a bank that, after selling its British subsidiary in August, is smaller than when BBVA launched a takeover bid that has proven to be as hostile as it seemed.