Madrid, Jun 3 (EFE) .- The ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) allows institutional investors to claim for the purchase of shares from Bankia’s IPO, although most of the operations have prescribed and there are barely a score remaining whose amount is around 30 million euros.
In response to several questions raised in December 2019 by the Supreme Court, the CJEU assumes the criterion advanced by a general counsel, who in February of this year suggested that large investors could claim liability to Bankia for the IPO if it was proven that there were inaccuracies in the prospectus, even though it was aimed at small investors.
To date, courts and Provincial Courts have been rejecting the demands of the companies that attended the Bankia jump in July 2011, considering that, unlike the retailers, they had knowledge that allowed them to interpret the reality of the entity.
The litigation to which the CJEU has responded is carried out by the bank, today CaixaBank, and the insurance mutual UMAS, a company that requested the reimbursement of its investment of 600,000 euros.
Other institutional investors that could benefit from the CJEU ruling are Meliá or the Villar Mir group, although according to the data from the 2020 Bankia accounts consulted by Efe, most of the operations have prescribed and there are still a score of whose amount is around 30 millions of euros.
THE BANKIA CASE
In September 2020, the fourth section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court – the same one that condemned part of the bench for Caja Madrid’s “black” cards – acquitted the former president of Bankia, Rodrigo Rato, and 34 others accused of irregularities in the IPO, understanding that it was legal and had the approval of the supervisory bodies.
In a 442-page ruling, the court held that the prospectus that was delivered to investors contained extensive and accurate information, and that the entire process prior to the jump to the stock of July 20, 2011 was perfectly known, supervised and authorized by the Bank of Spain, and had the consent of the Ministry of Economy.
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The ruling put an end to 8 years of investigation of a case that began in the summer of 2012, when UPyD, the party led by Rosa Díez, filed a complaint against Bankia’s directors and its parent company for various alleged crimes, including fraud and falsification of accounts.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also became involved and in January 2016 it dismissed individual appeals filed by Bankia against two judgments that decreed the nullity of the share purchase contracts issued by the entity, on the understanding that there was an error in the consent as there was a gap between the figures in the information leaflet and the actual ones.
In February of that year, the high court confirmed the cancellation of the acquisition of Bankia shares on its IPO, and a few days later the entity opened an out-of-court proceeding to return all the investment to the retail shareholders who attended the IPO. .
In this process, the entity has returned 1,900 million euros to more than 225,000 investor accounts.
LARGE INVESTORS
Among the large investors who attended Bankia’s IPO are Iberdrola, which claimed 12 million euros in court; Meliá Hotels, which requested the restitution of one million euros, or the Villar Mir Group, which through OHL, Ferroatlántica and Fertiberia invested close to 20 million euros.
Iberdrola withdrew, as did Mapfre, which invested almost 250 million euros in the IPO, or Mutua Madrileña, which acquired 25 million euros in bank securities.
But Meliá Hoteles or Villar Mir can now try to recover their investment, once the CJEU has considered that when there is a prospectus, a civil liability action should be able to be brought for the information in said prospectus, whatever the condition of the investor who is consider harmed.
(c) EFE Agency
