Surprising: El País Owner Helps The Government Kick Out Indra’s Independent Directors And Take Full Control Of Indra Without Takeover Bid

Indra Tecnocom

Surprisingly, outside the agenda of the General Shareholders’ Meeting, the representative of Amber Capital – which controls Grupo Prisa (El País, la SER…) and announced a week ago it also controls 4.1% of Indra – has proposed the removal of 4 of the company’s remaining independent directors: Alberto Terol, Enrique Leiva, Carmen Aquerreta and Ana de Pro. A proposal that has had the support of 53% of the capital, including of course the package of SEPI (which has been increasing to 28%) of SAPA Placencia… And that is in addition to the non-renewal of another independent, Isabel Torremocha. A real coup de force, perfectly orchestrated allowing for “the professional alignment between business and industry” as explained by the president. (He was placed by the Sánchez government in May 2021 without going through a single one of the procedures that Spanish listed companies are obliged to go through).

The Spanish Prime Minister’s lack of scruples has been perfectly and publicly accredited on many occasions. So when, three days after the electoral defeat in Andalusia, Pedro Sánchez’s government took control of Indra – the listed company that centralises electoral data in Spain – bypassing all the rules that the same government and the CNMV oblige others to comply with, including the obligation to launch a takeover bid when the majority control changes – all the alarm bells rang.

Already on 28 April, when the assault to take over Indra was public and notorious, pro-Sanchez regime newspapers such as diario.es tried to reassure the public. They explained that “the counting of votes in Spain makes any manipulation practically impossible, not even by Indra, the company that centralises the data but does not count the ballots. The system of counting votes at the polling stations, with the presence of the interventores of each party, allows them to compare the final results with those that they themselves have been able to collect directly”.

But if Sánchez had no qualms about publicly proclaiming: “Who’s in charge in the public prosecutor’s office? Well, that’s it”. Now he can say: “Who’s in charge at Indra? That’s it.”

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The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.