Banco Sabadell's takeover of TSB agreed by Europe
Tuesday, May 19, 2015 @ 10:11 AM
BANCO Sabadell's purchase of British high-street entity TSB has been approved by the European Commission.
The takeover will involve a buy-out of all of the Lloyds banking group's shares in the firm, meaning it will be 81.23% owned by the Spanish corporation, whose head office is in the town of Sabadell, Barcelona province.
A purchase price of 1.7 billion pounds (€2.34bn) was agreed on March 20, but the deal could not be sealed until it had been agreed by Spain's National Values Market Commission (CNMV) and the European Commission's competition committee had given it the green light.
The latter needed to investigate whether the takeover would suppose an unfair level of competition, or a near-monopoly on the British high street, but has concluded that it would not.
On the contrary, TSB's position on the high street would be reinforced, allowing it to compete on a stronger footing with other firms specialising in personal banking and small business loans – a situation which would 'benefit British consumers', the European Commission considers.
Lloyds TSB was one of the banks propped up by the UK government at the start of the financial crisis, having received a cash injection of 17bn pounds (nearly €24bn) in 2008, allowing it to acquire the HBOS Group which was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com