By Jesús Aguado
MADRID (Reuters) -Spain’s Banco Sabadell is planning to hold an extraordinary board meeting shortly to move its headquarters back to Catalonia, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday evening.
“The board meeting could be held as soon as Wednesday,” one of the sources said. The meeting could also take place on Thursday, one source said.
The news was first reported by Spanish newspaper ABC.
If Sabadell moved, it would be the first big company to return to the region after thousands left in the wake of Catalonia’s failed independence bid in October 2017, including Sabadell, which moved its headquarters to Alicante.
Last year, Salvador Illa, of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party, became head of the Catalan government, ending more than a decade of separatist rule.
Sabadell is currently the target of a hostile takeover bid by larger rival BBVA.
In November, Spain’s competition watchdog said that BBVA’s all-share offer for Sabadell, valued in April at more than 12 billion euros ($12.64 billion), had to undergo a longer antitrust review that could extend the process well into 2025, in a deal opposed by the government.
(Reporting by Jesús Aguado; editing by Aislinn Laing, Andrei Khalip and Rosalba O’Brien)
