Spain's banking major BBVA remained confident that its takeover bid for smaller rival Sabadell will be approved by competition authorities within the next few weeks, its chief executive officer Onur Genç said on Wednesday.
In November, the antitrust watchdog said that BBVA's all-share offer for Sabadell, valued in April at more than 12 billion euros ($12.64 billion), must undergo a longer phase 2 review that could extend the process well into 2025 in a deal opposed by the government.
"Our conviction is that the competition authority will give the green light to the process in the next few weeks ... we're very close to the end of that process," Genç said, underlining that the lender had submitted an unprecedented list of remedies to get the deal done.
Spain's market supervisor CNMV, which also needs to approve the deal, has said it would wait for the government before deciding on the potential authorization of the takeover prospectus.
Under Spanish law, the government cannot stop a bid from being made, but it has the final word on whether a merger goes ahead. The potential deal is mired in concerns over competition in the Spanish market since it would merge two of the five largest lenders in the country.
Meanwhile, like its bigger rival, Santander, BBVA has been expanding in emerging economies to boost income.
One of the reasons to buy Sabadell is to reduce BBVA's exposure to emerging markets such as Mexico and Türkiye, where the CEO said it expected the bank to book a net profit of 2.5 billion to 3 billion euros ($2.73 billion to $3.27 billion) in the next two to three years if inflation continued to come down.
Türkiye's annual inflation eased notably from the peak of around 75% last year, touching 39.1% in February, according to the official data.
BBVA Group holds close to 86% stake in the Turkish bank Garanti BBVA, raising its share further in 2022 after the voluntary takeover bid was approved by the board of directors of BBVA on Nov. 15, 2021.
Garanti BBVA is the second-largest private bank in Türkiye, with TL 3 trillion ($81.84 billion) in total assets as of the end of 2024. On the other hand, its net income totaled TL 92.18 billion, the bank said earlier in January.
