Offer rejected: Spanish bank BBVA wants to buy its rival Banco Sabadell
Spanish bank BBVA has stepped up its bid to buy the owner of British bank TSB.
The Bilbao-based company accepted a £10.5bn offer directly to Banco Sabadell shareholders after its Spanish rival’s board rejected the same proposal earlier in the week.
The move has sparked a rare hostile takeover battle in which a predator presents its proposals to its target’s shareholders rather than its directors.
Any deal would create Spain’s second-largest bank, behind Santander, worth more than £60bn.
But it would raise new questions about the future of TSB, which Sabadell bought in 2015 before suffering a cyber disaster in 2018 that saw it dubbed Totally Shambolic Bank.
BBVA has said TSB would add to its “global scale”, although it is unclear what the new owner’s plans would be.
“We presented an extraordinarily attractive offer to create a larger scale bank in one of our most important markets,” said BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila.
It is the second attempted merger between BBVA and Sabadell. They called off merger talks in 2020 after failing to agree on terms, including price.
TSB faced backlash this week after it announced plans to close a further 36 branches in the UK, leaving it with just 175.
By the time the closures are complete, the bank will have eliminated 459 sites since 2015.