BBVA tries to lure Sabadell shareholders, board recommendation on bid due

By Jesús Aguado

MADRID (Reuters) -Spain's BBVA said its shareholders and those of Sabadell who tender their shares in its hostile takeover bid will receive a record interim dividend against 2025 results.

Investors will receive an interim gross dividend of 0.32 euros ($0.38) per share in cash on November 7, a 10.3% increase compared to 2024, in what is the highest interim dividend in BBVA's history, BBVA said late on Monday.

Sabadell shareholders who tendered their shares will also receive this dividend, BBVA added, as the payout will materialise following the settlement of the tender offer, which is currently worth 16.86 billion euros.

Investors have until October 10 to accept BBVA's bid, which on September 22 offered one of its own shares for every 4.8376 Sabadell shares, a rise of 10% to 3.39 euros per share, from the previous offer of 3.084 euros per share, based on September 19 closing prices and the previous exchange ratio.

The bid, however, represented just a premium of 1.6% compared to the day before the new terms were announced.

Sabadell's board is set to meet on Tuesday and issue its recommendation on the improved bid, a spokesperson said.

Chief Executive Cesar Gonzalez-Bueno has already said the board would "probably not recommend" the new price he still considered insufficient.

However, the attention is focused on the opinion of Mexican David Martinez, the biggest shareholder on Sabadell's board with a 3.86% holding through Fintech Europe.

Earlier this month, Martinez said as part of the bank's board opinion after BBVA had formally launched the unrevised offer that BBVA's strategy was right but that the offer had been too low.

While he agreed the offer price should be rejected, he abstained from supporting other parts of the board's opinion.

His stake is currently worth around 639 million euros.

($1 = 0.8524 euros)

(Reporting by Jesús Aguado; Editing by David Latona and Susan Fenton)