Enrique Riquelme of Alicante bought the assets of the multinational Abengoa in Seville, the largest operation by a businessman from the state to date. The proposal of Cox Energy, a renewable energy company operating in Spain and Latin America, founded and chaired by Riquelme, surpassed the proposals of the Urbas Group, the American fund Terramar and the Portuguese Resource Project Management (RCP). They also chose the entire production unit of the holding, which consists of about thirty subsidiaries. A few partial proposals were also submitted.
One of the keys explaining the decision of the Seville court responsible for the bankruptcy that the multinational company has sunk since last October was its commitment to continue the business and above all the employment of the company, which employs 9,505 people. . In addition, judge Jesús Gabaldón’s order highlights Cox Energy’s “commitment and willingness to contribute to the contribution of liquidity” and considers its proposal “sufficiently grounded, sound, credible and feasible”. It therefore concludes that “continuing to approve, it is most suitable for the benefit of the contests”.
Due to Abengoa Innovación’s contracts with Navantia, as well as the five-day deadline granted to creditors with special privileges such as Santander, CaixaBank, Credit Agricole, BBVA, Bankinter, the operation is now awaiting permission from the Ministry of Defense. and HSBC- to approve the transmission.
The award represents a giant step in the history of the company created by Enrique Riquelme, which within a few years became one of the renewable energy operators with the largest presence in Latin America, where it was listed on the Mexican stock exchange. In addition to having a large number of projects in Spain.
The bid submitted by Cox Energy is worth € 564 million and is for all business and corporate areas of Abengoa, which includes, among others, the development of turnkey engineering projects for infrastructure, energy, water or telecommunications construction. It’s a job that the judge considers “complementary” with the business developed by Cox Energy itself, which focuses on the development and commissioning of solar power plants.
numbers
The proposal includes a minimum payment of 27.3 million to the contest, with a mechanism to increase this value in the future. But above all, Cox Energy is taking on €206 million of outstanding debt and guarantees for Abengoa projects, as well as €252 million of “Project Financing” debt, which the Sevillian engineering company attributes to other assets. Likewise, Cox Energy agrees to pay the 22.8 million Euros owned by the multinational company through Social Security and guarantees 100% repayment of concessional loans to creditors. In this sense, the company remembers that it had already transferred eight million euros on March 30 for the first payments of its bankruptcy loans.
As for the financial plan, it includes a set of guarantees worth 300m euros and a commitment to reduce Abengoa’s treasury needs by two-thirds. According to the information given after the award was announced, it is a target to be achieved thanks to the direct contribution of the workload, which the company estimates as 3 billion 200 million euros for the next three years.
On the other hand, the company also insisted on its workforce and its commitment to maintaining 9,505 existing jobs. A claim made clear by Cox Energy’s transfer of 2.5 million euros on February 24 to pay the late payroll of the Andalusian company’s employees.
eight-year decline
The flagship of the Andalusian industry for decades, Abengoa’s problems began to surface in 2015 due to the enormous debt the company has accumulated in its commitment to the development of renewable energies and biofuels, among other investments. So, in November of this year, the multinational company filed for the first time before bankruptcy and managed to get out of it, but only started a long decline, which led it to several restructurings, which did not finish solving its problems. problems.
Changes made during these years included the division of most of the business into subsidiaries of the group, the parent company filing for bankruptcy in 2021, and the decision to go into liquidation last June. For their part, the subsidiaries continued to operate until they too entered a pre-bankruptcy state, after the Government refused to inject 249 million from the Fund last July to save the Strategic Enterprises Solvency Support Fund.
In October, the holding’s executives filed for definitive bankruptcy for these subsidiaries, with Grupo Urbas’ bid to buy the production unit.
New bidders were added in the process, and in the end, Cox Energy, who submitted the most convincing bid to the court, won the award. So, for example, Portugal RCP offered the best price – 35 million euros according to the court decision – for the tender, but the court found that there was a lack of knowledge and certainty about the business plan and also required Group companies to waive intra-group loans.
The judgment in the Urbas case is sufficient for the real estate sector in which the company, which also owns the Alicante construction company Ecisa, operates, but not for the assets you have to assume.
Staff celebrates end of firm’s crisis
According to EFE, Abengoa workers celebrated this Tuesday the transfer of the assets and liabilities of this company to Cox Energy, which closed the open crisis in the years before it presented the bankruptcy. Laura Rodríguez, head of the Abengoa Energía works council, stressed that workers are happy because they have received “positive news” about the engineering company after years of uncertainty. Therefore, he appreciated the Cox group’s offer to retain over 9,500 Abengoa employees across Spain and abroad. “Thanks to Cox Energy’s commitment, to the public administrations but above all to the workers’ representatives,” said Reyes Maroto, former Industry Minister and PSOE’s current Madrid mayoral candidate. Today, we can celebrate an industrial worker future as Abengoa continues to be a world benchmark”.