The State acknowledges a conflict of interest in Indra

BarcelonaThe State Holding Company for Industrial Participations (SEPI), the state's investment arm, has acknowledged a conflict of interest at Indra, the state-owned technology and defense company, regarding the potential acquisition of Escribano Mechanical & Engineering SL (EM&M), a defense company owned by the family of Indra's chairman. In a statement to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), SEPI indicated that it "has conveyed to Indra its concern about the influence this conflict of interest has on the analysis of this transaction, despite the measures taken to mitigate it." In fact, SEPI asserts that any conflict of interest between Indra and EM&M should be resolved before the transaction takes place. For this reason, SEPI stated, it requested that "this conflict of interest be resolved so that the analysis of the transaction can continue and a decision can be made that is as advantageous as possible for Indra."

In this way, the Spanish government, through SEPI, is reportedly pressuring Ángel Escribano to step down as president of Indra. In fact, on Tuesday, rumors about a possible resignation by the Indra president caused the company's stock value to plummet. However, this Wednesday, the Indra president indicated that he has no intention of resigning, according to Europa Press. In any case, Indra has already published a protocol with the CNMV (Spanish National Securities Market Commission) regarding the possibility of continuing with this operation, which stipulated that Ángel Escribano would abstain from making any decisions and would step aside, and that the potential takeover would be led by the company's CEO, José Vicente de los Mozos.

In Indra, Spain is the largest shareholder with 28% of the capital, while the second largest shareholder, with 14.3%, is the Escribano brothers, who also own EM&E. Therefore, a conflict of interest would arise because, if the operation involved co-ownership by its own president...