Fernando González Urbaneja | Ferrovial’s shareholders’ meeting passed with evident calm and a consensus materialised in 76% attendance and 93% of votes in favour of the decision to move the company’s headquarters to the Netherlands. All the dust that has swirled around the agreement to move the company’s head office has come to nothing for the company’s shareholders, who have validated the board’s proposal without criticism and without any rejection other than that of 5% of the shareholders (4.5% in the hands of one of the heirs removed from management).
What has surrounded this business decision has been disproportionate, with intense, useless and excessive intervention by the government, which over the course of five weeks has disqualified the measure with arguments that have not influenced a highly professional shareholding headed by investment funds and the founding and managing family, who cannot be accused of ignorance or absent-mindedness.
This unreasonableness comes because the effects on the Spanish economy, the Spanish brand or the prestige of the country are irrelevant. It is not the first Spanish company to optimise its headquarters, nor is it the first European company to choose the Netherlands. Nor will it be the last. There are sufficient financial reasons to locate the headquarters in Amsterdam, just as there are tax advantages for setting up in Ireland or Luxembourg or in other regions of Spain.
And above all, there is freedom of establishment so that companies and citizens can freely decide where to set up in strict compliance with current legislation. The emotional argument about nationality is nothing more than emotional and nationality and says little to global investors seeking the financial optimum.
What is striking in this case is the government’s belligerence in the form of successive and insistent declarations by ministers, including the president, between admonishing and threatening Ferrovial’s board to rectify the situation. Arguments such as the government’s duty to inform shareholders of “the truth” (a curious concept) as if these professional shareholders were living in ignorance. The fiscal threats made by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Social Security are reckless and far removed from the customs and habits of listed companies.
The debate is excessive, short-term, unfocused, exaggerated and politicised in the worst sense of the word. With the number of problems facing any government in a situation such as the current one, to devote effort and hours to where the headquarters of a multinational group should be is as absurd as it is redneck.
