Financial sensibility is on the surface in the political arena as rarely until now. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise confirmed on Tuesday that it is analyzing whether the world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, with almost nine trillion in assets under management, should request the authorization of the Council of Ministers to achieve with the ownership of 20.6% of Naturgy. “It is a strategic company and we have to analyze all the details”, said sources in the department.
On Friday, BlackRock announced its intention to acquire, for 11.4 billion euros, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an investment fund that currently has a 20.6% stake in Naturgy. This percentage, together with the 0.92% that BlackRock already owns through its investment funds, would place the financial giant as the second most important shareholder of the Spanish gas company.
Sumar and Podemos charged yesterday against this possibility and are calling on the Spanish Government to veto it. “The Spanish Government must prevent the takeover of 20% of Naturgy by BlackRock. This fund has colossal dimensions and significant holdings in 19 major companies in the country. Its growing power threatens our autonomy”, says Carlos Martín Urriza, economic spokesman for Sumar in Congress, via X (formerly Twitter). For her part, Irene Montero, Podemos reference and former Minister of Equality, stated that “if the vultures want to take control and put democracy at risk, Spain must deepen its intervention in this strategic sector and create an energy public”.
Political alarms have been triggered, among other things, by the temporal proximity of this operation to that of Telefónica, despite the fact that they are very different cases. The surprise landing of the Saudi fund STC in Telefónica put the Spanish Executive on alert, which decided to acquire up to a maximum of 10% of the operator through SEPI to guarantee its “Spanishness “.
He is now studying whether or not BlackRock’s operation on Naturgy is affected by the Antiopes law, which sets the 10% threshold for a foreign investor to request authorization from the Spanish Government to enter a strategic company.
That Naturgy is strategic became clear when the IFM fund entered the capital in 2021 after a complicated takeover that was finally approved by the Spanish Government with exceptions.
The current situation is not so clear. “Naturgy’s shareholding does not change. There is no fund that wants to enter it. GIP is already a shareholder. BlackRock has bought GIP, it does not enter Naturgy directly”, financial sources explain. In addition, GIP has long announced its interest in selling this stake to Naturgy. “We need to see if BlackRock respects the nature of GIP’s investment, that their investment reaches the maximum fixed time and also wants to get out or, on the contrary, they want to stay there. If it is the first option, they may not even get to exceed 10% of the capital”, they add. It will have to wait until the third quarter of 2024.
“Why has no one until now questioned the weight of GIP in Naturgy?”, point out these sources. “GIP is also an international fund and much more aggressive, it seeks profitability in short periods of time, BlackRock has a vocation to permanence in its investees”, they question.
