• Audit SEPI advisers believed that Abengoa "meets the requirements" for the rescue that the Government has denied

  • Negotiation Abengoa workers manage to seat the Board and the Government at a new table to seek solutions to the group's crisis

  • Confrontation Abengoa, the first front between the Board and the Government of Sánchez after 19-J

Save what you can and is worth saving.

That is the maxim of the

agreement

reached this Monday by the central government and the Junta de Andalucía to try to avoid the disappearance of the multinational Abengoa, which is facing its umpteenth vital crisis after the refusal, precisely by Pedro Sánchez's executive, to grant it a rescue of 249 million euros in European funds.

Starting this Tuesday, a

technical group

will analyze all the scenarios and will closely examine the viability plan that the company presented for the frustrated rescue and that it is now going to touch up and specify what financial instruments can be used to refloat the engineering company, doomed , otherwise, to its extinction.

But it will not be all of Abengoa that enters into that plan promised by the Government and the Board, but only those companies, those subsidiaries - it has almost 300 - that are active, operational and viable and concentrate employment, which is the great objective.

Guarded, five hundred meters away, by the same workers who have forced them to park differences, and with the mediation of the Mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz, the Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto, and the Councilor for Economic Transformation of the Board, Rogelio Velasco , in addition to representatives of Abengoa led by the president of Abenewco, the subsidiary in which the activity is concentrated, and the workforce, Juan Pablo López-Bravo, have analyzed for a little over two hours the situation of the company and its

11,000 workers

that it has around the world -5,000 in Spain alone- and how to save the umpteenth precipice that it has loomed over since its first crisis broke out in 2015, triggered by unbearable indebtedness.

The conclusion of the meeting, which has lasted almost two hours, is the

"firm commitment"

of the three administrations, as highlighted by the Minister Velasco, so that Abengoa, the Minister of Industry, for her part, "continues to exist".

This will materialize in the creation of a group that will do the technical work and that will be complemented by meetings of a political nature in which decisions will be made.

The first thing, according to Maroto, is to define the perimeter of Abengoa that can be saved.

For the time being, he explained, efforts will be concentrated on the

27 subsidiaries

that concentrate most of the activity and the workers, the same ones that last week requested the pre-bankruptcy of creditors.

More subsidiaries could be added to these, but as long as they meet the requirements of having activity and employment.

Of the more than 300 that hang from the Abengoa tree, most barely work and there are some that do not even have employees.

Among the priorities of the administrations is to address the

liquidity needs

that the company has, which it has put on the table at this meeting and which are urgent in order to continue operating.

Then the concrete measures for the rescue will come and the minister has already advanced that they will have to have the approval of the European Commission.

"There is very little time and we have to be pragmatic," insisted Maroto, who has not ruled out the entry of

new investors

among the available options .

Meeting with the Minister of Industry, the Minister of Economic Transformation and the Mayor of Seville, among others, together with the management of Abengoa.JOAQUÍN CORCHEROEUROPA PRESS

The Board finds "a channel"

On its side, the regional government has also opened up to contributing public resources, something that it had refused until now.

It will do so, the Minister for Economic Transformation has justified, through "a channel" that they are exploring and that, in any case, would require the endorsement of Brussels.

Doing it otherwise, he argued, would be considered giving

direct State aid

that "is prohibited not only in the EU but by the OECD."

Since 2015, Abengoa has undergone a few

restructurings

and has gone through various rescue plans.

The last one, the one that has not gone ahead now, proposed the injection of 200 million by the Californian fund Terramar, with the condition, yes, that the State commit to an aid of 249 million euros that Abengoa requested under the of the Covid fund for companies affected by the pandemic.

But last week, the State Industrial Participation Society (SEPI) denied, after more than a year examining the company's request and despite the fact that the advisers consulted gave it the green light, albeit with nuances, the 249 million loan and dynamited the

roadmap

to which the Sevillian company had entrusted its future in the short and medium term.

SEPI, which reports directly to the ministry headed by Maroto, argued that neither the return of that money nor the

viability

of the company was guaranteed, with legal and fiscal contingencies of several billion euros.

four-month extension

The resounding no from the Government put Abengoa one step away from

liquidation

and, in fact, its board of directors requested the pre-competition of creditors to have a final extension of four months to reach an agreement with the creditors or achieve what until The moment has been impossible, the commitment of the public administrations with a rescue that drives away the ghost of what would be the most important bankruptcy in the history of Spain after the one that starred the real estate company Martinsa Fadesa, with a debt of 6,000 million euros .

The pressure of the workforce and trade union and business organizations led last week to a crossroads of accusations and reproaches between the executive of Pedro Sánchez and the Andalusian government of Juanma Moreno, who from Moncloa was accused of being the first reason that Abengoa leaned, again, to the precipice for denying him a

guarantee of 20 million

euros.

The Andalusian Board, for its part, replied that 20 million does not save a multinational the size of Abengoa and insisted that it has no legal tool to give direct aid to companies, a competence that the central government does have through, precisely, the SEPI.

The one that is already liquidated is the parent company, Abengoa SA, the original company founded by the Benjumea and Abaurre families in January 1941 and which became one of the

largest on the Ibex 35

.

After the dismissal of Felipe Benjumea in 2015, the managers of the company transferred the entire business and the employees to a new company, Abenewco 2, which is in turn the parent company of the 297 subsidiaries into which its activity is divided.

Twenty-seven of these subsidiaries are the ones that have requested the pre-bankruptcy of creditors before the

failed rescue

of SEPI, which formally requested only six of them.

The history of Abengoa in the last six years, which became a benchmark in the green industry and renewable energies, is the history of a flight forward to avoid the disaster that is now closer than ever.

The bubble that the multinational had created under the command of the Benjumea family, its founders and original owners,

burst in 2015

and successive rescue operations were necessary to move forward as oxygen balloons that always proved insufficient.

Until the pandemic broke out, the numbers predicted a viable future for Abengoa, which in 2019 had increased its sales and notably reduced its losses and its debt.

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  • Abengoa

  • Kings Maroto

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  • Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla

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