Foment proposes that companies such as SEPI or Red Eléctrica move their headquarters to Barcelona
The Catalan employers' association Foment del Treball proposes that "strategic" state companies such as the Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (Sepi) or others with state participation, such as Red Eléctrica - now integrated into Redeia - move their headquarters to Barcelona. In statements to Catalunya Ràdio, the president of the employers' association, Josep Sánchez Llibre, said that he "has conveyed" this proposal to the Generalitat, given its "complicity" with the Spanish Government, so that it "helps" to make this happen, reports Efe.
Sánchez Llibre has assured that this change of “corporate headquarters” could be adopted in an “easy” way, with a “rapid administrative decision”. He has argued that both Foment and the current Generalitat share the objective of Catalonia “regaining economic leadership in Spain”, and has added that the fact that the decision-making of these companies was in Barcelona could help this.
The comments from the employers' representative come after the first major Catalan company to move its headquarters in 2017 - Banc Sabadell - opted to return to the community. Before that, Ciments Molins and Laboratorios Ordesa followed the same path of return.
Read also Sabadell's board unanimously approves the return of the headquarters Eduardo Magallon
Sánchez Llibre has insisted that Barcelona must attract as many “strategic decision-making centres” as possible, both from national and international companies. Along these lines, the business leader has assured that Foment is trying to generate “maximum complicity” with the Ibex-35 companies so that they locate “large parts or corporate bodies” of these multinationals in Catalonia.
He also added that “probably in the next 4 months” we will see that some of the companies that in 2017 decided to move their headquarters out of Catalonia “will follow the same path as Banc Sabadell”, which in January announced the return of its headquarters to Sabadell after more than seven years in Alicante. Regarding the decision of this bank, he said that Foment had “nothing to do” with its return and it was a “unilateral decision” of the entity, although he admitted that Foment intends to achieve the return to Catalonia of the companies that left, a movement that is already “taking place”, he pointed out.
The employers' association seeks the complicity of the GeneralitatRegarding the BBVA hostile takeover bid, he said he hopes it “does not go ahead” and recalled that Foment was one of the first economic actors “to cry out” regarding the negative consequences for the business world of Banco Sabadell eventually disappearing.
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