One of BETTER FINANCE’s Spanish Member Organisations, the Association of Minority Shareholders, AEMEC, has been defending minority shareholders in the CaixaBank case since 2016.
Since 2016 they have been following different operations carried out by CaixaBank, in which AEMEC believes the rights of minority shareholders have been infringed.
During 2016, a series of very complex corporate operations took place that, according to AEMEC, have benefited CaixaBank’s largest shareholder Criteria far more than they benefitted the bank’s minority shareholders. These operations included related-party transactions and other transactions with possible conflicts of interest and resulted in equity losses for minority shareholders due to the sale of treasury stock, with the overall final result amounting to a loss for the minority shareholders. In 2018 two minority shareholders filed a lawsuit against CaixaBank and requested an investigation of the aforementioned transactions. This complaint was admitted for processing and resulted in an investigation by a commission looking into possible corporate crimes, including, but not limited to, possible market abuse (insider trading), disloyal administration and false accounts or accounting documents.
