Junts and the PSOE include in their agreement a section that puts pressure on companies and banks that fled Catalonia after the illegal 1-O referendum to reverse their change of headquarters. Both agree that “the essential elements of a plan will be addressed to facilitate and promote the return to Catalonia of the headquarters of companies that changed their location to other territories in recent years.”
According to the latest data from the College of Registrars, 4,942 companies have left Catalonia in net terms since 2017, the largest exodus of all the territories in that period. The mere mention of this phenomenon in the agreement between both parties and its announcement that there will be a plan for them to return already constitutes pressure on the companies and banks that made the decision. They were led by the La Caixa Banking Foundation chaired by Isidro Fainé with CaixaBank and by Banco Sabadell, chaired by Josep Oliu. Naturgy, Catalana Oeste, Aguas de Barcelona, ??Abertis and a long list of others supported the movement to protect their shareholders from the uncertainty of continuing in a territory willing to leave Spain and the European Union with a unilateral secession.
No future Government can force banks and companies to return, since it is a decision that corresponds to their managing bodies, but it can exert pressure. The State is also the second shareholder of CaixaBank, although without determining power.
PSOE and Junts do not clarify what measures they will take, but already in his statement on September 5, the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, complained that Mariano Rajoy’s 2017 decree continued in force. This facilitated the change of headquarters at the request of, above all, CaixaBank, which needed an agile exit standard. Reversing this decree would paradoxically cause more difficulty for the return, because it would mean giving the floor again to the shareholders’ meetings and not only to the boards of directors.
In any case, the main banks and companies involved have already recently shown this newspaper their unwillingness to return to Catalonia as the circumstances of stability and necessary legal security do not exist. In fact, this Thursday’s agreement between Junts and PSOE resurrects the self-determination referendum that was the main reason why banks lost deposits and Catalan companies saw their financial conditions worsen.
“Junts will propose the holding of a self-determination referendum on the political future of Catalonia protected by article 92 of the Constitution,” the PSOE allows it to appear in the text of the agreement. Such a claim is not accompanied by any express waiver on the part of Junts to a possible new unilateral action or to disconnection laws feared by companies. “The Board of Directors of CaixaBank made the decision to move the registered office for the reasons that were explained at the time without setting any deadline or any conditions. The registered office is in Valencia and is intended to remain permanent,” maintains, for example, CaixaBank as official position. His response to this Thursday’s agreement is “no comment.”
For these entities, especially the banking ones, it is delicate that Junts and PSOE once again raise doubts about what their future headquarters will be.
For its part, the Catalan employers’ association Foment del Treball has expressed in a statement “its favorable view in reference to the point that deals with “a plan to facilitate and promote the return to Catalonia of the headquarters of companies that changed their location to other territories in recent years”.
He points out that, on repeated occasions, the president of Foment, Josep Sánchez Llibre, has insisted on the need for the return of these companies, “because Catalonia is where they should be.”
Pending more details, “the Catalan employers’ association can only add that the necessary condition for the return of companies to Catalonia is the sum of stability and legal security to favor a social and economic climate that promotes the confidence necessary for the attracting investments and improving the country’s productivity”.
And the CEOE employers’ association? Its president, Antonio Garamendi, assures in a statement that, given “the serious concern that exists in the business world” he has convened “an extraordinary and urgent Executive Committee for next Monday in which the situation in Spain will be addressed.”
