The Royal Academy of the Language defines fiasco as "disappointment or adverse result of something that was expected to happen well." Some of this has happened in Abengoa, which last February filed a bankruptcy after more than five years of drawing. Now the prosecutor finds evidence of crime by his last managers. The Andalusian firm, once a model company, has joined the list of the most notorious business failures in the history of Spain, normally characterized by the speculative (and in some cases criminal) actions of its leaders: the Rumasa de José María Ruiz- Mateos, Jordi Pujol's Catalan Bank, Mario Conde's Banesto, Manuel de la Concha's Ibercorp, Juan Villalonga's Terra, Antonio Camacho's Gescartera, Fernando Martín's Martinsa, Gerardo Díaz Ferrán's Marsans,the Bankia by Rodrigo Rato, the Pescanova by Manuel Fernández Sousa, the Banco Popular by Ángel Ron ... They may not all be there, but they are all there and, through them, a large part of the story is followed mercantile democracy.
Choose a company
1983. Rumasa
1984. Catalan Banking
1993. Banesto
1994. Ibercorp
2000. Terra
2001. Gescartera
2008. Martinsa
2010. Marsans
2012. Bankia
2013. Pescanova
2017. Banco Popular
2021. Abengoa
1983
Rumasa
Police deployment at the entrance of the Banco de Jerez, of the 'holding' RUMASA, on February 24, 1983. / PHOTO: EFE / Rafael Pascual
Jose Maria Ruiz-Mateos
Ruiz-Mateos fled Spain and, after passing through London, settled in the German city of Frankfurt until he was extradited and imprisoned.
Released, he came disguised as Superman to the National Court, where he came to blows with the Minister of Economy and Finance, Miguel Boyer (that hilarious "I hit you, milk" that he released while raising his fist in a ridiculous way was left for history) or as a bullfighter to the Plaza de Castilla.
The first great business scandal of democracy was carried out by Rumasa, a group that had grown since the Franco regime and whose founder and president, José María Ruiz-Mateos, did not hesitate to eat up companies (in crisis or not) to add nearly 400, with a presence in practically all sectors, from the winemaker to the financial sector - it had 18 banks, with the Atlantic as the standard bearer. The growth had been disproportionate and the group's accounts were out of balance, which provided all the ingredients to arouse suspicion.
On February 23, 1983 (the second
most famous
23F
in the history of Spain after the attempted coup two years earlier) the so-called
bee
holding company
was expropriated by the socialist government, which had come to power only three months earlier. .
The measure was taken "in order to fully guarantee bank deposits, jobs and the property rights of third parties, seriously threatened," he explained.
The investigation discovered double counting (box b), a hole of more than 111,000 million pesetas (667 million euros), a tax debt of about 20,000 million and a huge concentration of risks in banks, in addition to annual losses of 9,000 million pesetas compared to the 5,000 million announced profits.
Among the significant companies of the
holding
There were the construction company Hispano Alemana, the hotel company Hotasa, the luxury products firm Loewe, several wineries in Jerez and Rioja and Galerías Preciados, which had passed its particular ordeal after introducing the concept of department stores in Spain with the name of Sederías Carretas. Galerías could not keep up with the pace imposed by its great rival, El Corte Inglés, and ended up in the hands of the main creditor, Banco Urquijo, which sold it to Rumasa. After the expropriation, it fell into the hands of the Venezuelan businessman Gustavo Cisneros; then it passed, successively, through the British Mountleigh group and a group of Spanish investors, until it suspended payments with a debt of 28,000 million pesetas. In 1995 El Corte Inglés got it. This company, then chaired by Isidoro Álvarez,incorporated the stores under its label and all personnel without casualties.
Not happy with the scandal of the eighties, after the years Ruiz-Mateos returned to his old ways with Nueva Rumasa, another network of more than 100 companies (including Clesa, Dhul, Elgorriaga, Trapa and even Rayo Vallecano) that entered in bankruptcy in February 2011. The family blamed this crisis on a "brutal campaign" by the media and the banks, which did not give them credit.
However, they had prepared a large pyramid scheme based on promissory notes to supposedly finance new acquisitions.
Justice convicted the businessman, who died in 2015, for fraud, insolvency and fraud.
His six sons (he also had seven other daughters with Teresa Rivero) were also convicted of fraud and insolvency in the sale of a hotel in Mallorca and another in Gran Canaria.
1984
Catalan banking
Operators initiating the change of the Catalan Banking labels to those of BBVA (06/10/2000).
PHOTO: EFE / JM / Toni Garriga
Jordi Pujol
Pujol, who a month before the lawsuit had achieved his first absolute majority, was legitimated to accuse the socialist government of Felipe González and the prosecutors of attacking Catalonia and trying to end his political career.
"The Government has committed an unworthy move," he pronounced from the balcony of the Generalitat before the thousands of people he took to the streets to protest.
Almost in parallel with Rumasa, the Catalan Banking case took place. The Bank of Spain had been suspicious since 1980, although the scandal did not break out until May 1984, when prosecutors Carlos Jiménez Villarejo and José María Mena filed a complaint for alleged diversion of funds against 25 directors of the entity, including Jordi Pujol, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia since 1980. Prosecutors accused former directors of misappropriation, falsification of documents and plotting to alter the price of things, basically through the use of money from a box b.
The
president
turned the judicial process into a general case against Catalonia that mediated the judicial process. In the end, the Territorial Court exonerated him with 33 votes in favor and eight against, among them the current Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles.
The case remained a taboo subject on which it was better to keep quiet, explains journalist Pere Ríos in his book
Banca Catalana: open case
. Until Pujol himself dismantled the official account on July 25, 2014, when he confessed in a statement that since September 1980 he had enjoyed a hidden fortune abroad due to a legacy from his father. On June 16, the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz agreed to open an oral trial against Pujol, his seven children and 11 other people in relation to that allegedly illicit fortune that was kept hidden. His wife, Marta Ferrusola, was left out due to health problems.
Banca Catalana was made up of four commercial banks and one industrial bank, in addition to the parent company, headed by Jordi Pujol, as chief executive between 1974 and 1976, as well as the main shareholder. The Pujol family had bought Banca Dorca to create this conglomerate, whose banking philosophy was
fer pais
(make a country). Something like an official ICO-style bank in Catalonia, but with deposits from individuals.
The outbreak occurred when the Bank of Spain, in a simultaneous inspection of the group's banks, discovered a negative equity in excess of 100,000 million pesetas. A figure that the owners of the entity attributed to political manipulation to the point that the Generalitat sent the Minister of Economy, Ramón Trías Fargas, to negotiate in Madrid. An external audit by Price Waterhouse, which Banca Catalana reluctantly accepted, confirmed the hole.
The Bank of Spain applied the same surgery as the rest of the insolvent entities, which at that time were many. The intervention took place and the protocol steps were taken: change of owner, change of board, accordion operation (reduction and increase of capital) and sale by competition after its reorganization, which cost the State coffers more than 344,000 million pesetas .
The candidate most willing to buy it was La Caixa de Pensions (it had not yet merged with the Barcelona one), but the bank opposed a savings bank taking it.
Later a purchase was designed by the group of the big banks that was unsuccessful.
Finally, it was the Banco de Vizcaya that launched the adventure.
He appointed Alfredo Sáenz as president, who would later reappear as a
firefighter
in Banesto.
While putting the machinery for salvation into operation, the Bank of Spain, aware that the leaders of the seized banks used to complain, sent the aforementioned report to the Prosecutor's Office to decide if there were indications to intervene.
There were.
1993
Banesto
Façade of the Banesto headquarters, on Calle Alcalá (Madrid).
PHOTO: Santi Burgos
Mario Conde
At the end of 1993, the Bank of Spain gave Conde an ultimatum and prevented him from distributing a dividend.
He was reluctant to acknowledge the situation and even tried to minimize the importance of the news to the press, until Banesto was intervened by the authorities on December 28.
It was April Fool's Day, but she wasn't an April Fool.
Those were years of reconversions and adaptation to the European Union, which Spain had joined in 1986. The banking sector underwent a profound transformation.
The Revell Report was then running through the banks' headquarters, which predicted mergers between the so-called Big Seven to reach a size that would allow them to compete in a more powerful market.
It proposed the integration of the Central Bank with that of Vizcaya, the Hispano with the Popular and Banesto with Santander.
However, it was the Banco de Bilbao, which had been left out of the pools, which moved token with a takeover bid (it was the first time that this word was heard, an acronym for a takeover bid) on Banesto, which this entity considered hostile . The opposition of what had been the first Spanish bank for decades was led by an ambitious state lawyer named Mario Conde, who, with the financial hand of Juan Abelló, had become the champion of the crusade of the old bank families. In addition to rising to the leadership of the entity, he began to make his way in politics until he appeared as a great white hope for the right.
As an alternative, Conde devised the merger with the Central Bank. To do this, it turned to Cartera Central, a company that had 10% of the Central and that was divided between the Kuwait Invesment Office (KIO) group, represented in Spain by the Barcelona financier Javier de la Rosa, and the cousins Alberto Cortina and Alberto Alcocer (
the Albertos
), then married to the Koplowitz sisters and in command of the construction company FCC. But it was the union of two sick people. The operation failed and only three months after considering (from November 1988 to February 1989) the presidents of the banks (Alfonso Escámez and Mario Conde) declined to continue due to “difficulties of all kinds that have arisen since the signing of the merger rules. ”.
But Conde, meanwhile, continued to carry out a very personalist management at Banesto. He managed the entity like a hunting ground and carried out operations that were out of financial orthodoxy. It used as its armed wing the powerful industrial group of the bank, which it integrated into the Banesto Industrial Corporation with the intention of taking it out on the stock market and fixing the financial mishaps that had led to several conflicts with the Government and warnings from the Bank of Spain. The operation, however, was thwarted by the Gulf War in 1991. From then on, the entity began to drain water everywhere and no longer found a way to plug the tracks.
In April 1994, four months after its intervention, Banesto would end up in the hands of Banco Santander, which would win the auction held by the Bank of Spain against BBV and Argentaria, then separate entities. Emilio Botín, who had assumed the presidency of the entity in 1986, was thus beginning to make her fat. Years later, in 1999, the merger with the BCH would come (born from the integration of the Central and the Hispano, forced by the Bank of Spain to avoid another drama), which turned the one that was the smallest of the big seven into the first Spanish bank.
While Santander grew, the investigation and judicial process against Conde and his management team took place, which would end with a 10-year sentence, later extended to 20 by the Supreme Court, of which a third part did not meet.
Among other crimes, he was accused of fraud and misappropriation and of having generated a hole of 605,000 million pesetas (3,600 million euros) in what, according to expert sources, was only the tip of the iceberg of the accumulation of operations that he had carried out in the bank and, above all, in the group companies.
He had previously been convicted of misappropriation and falsehood in the Argentia Trust case for six years for withdrawing 600 million pesetas that were deposited in a Swiss account.
1994
Ibercorp
Facade of the Ibercorp Bank.
PHOTO: Miguel Gener
Manuel de la Concha
The scandal landed De la Concha and Mariano Rubio, former governor of the Bank of Spain, for tax fraud and falsification of documents. And it had political consequences, such as the resignation as parliamentary spokesman for the PSOE of former minister Carlos Solchaga, who had proposed Rubio.
At the beginning of 1992 the Ibercorp case occurred when it was discovered that the securities agency of this group, managed by Manuel de la Concha, had manipulated a list of clients holding shares in Sistemas Financieros (SF), a company belonging to the company, hiding the true identity of important depositors.
The three main shareholders - De la Concha, Jaime Soto and Benito Tamayo - were sentenced to one year in prison after reaching an agreement whereby the prosecutor lowered the initial request from 15 years.
They were accused of carrying out speculative operations on the Stock Market and treasury shares with the sole purpose of sustaining the listing of the companies of the group for their personal enrichment.
The loss was calculated at 7,100 million pesetas.
The
The Ibercorp case is a paradigmatic example of the
culture of hitting the ball
or quick enrichment that triumphed in Spain after entering the European Community, with unstoppable financial activity, high interest rates, a buoyant real estate business, mergers and acquisitions ... The amounts defrauded do not arrive to those of other cases of the time, but it stands out for the people who were involved, many of them belonging to the so-called
beautiful people
, such as the governor of the Bank of Spain, Mariano Rubio, the former minister Miguel Boyer or De la Concha himself.
At the end of 1986, the Exchange and Stock Exchange agent Manuel de la Concha, who was the president of the Madrid Stock Exchange, wanted to turn his office into something more than a
chiringuito
. To do this, it bought the Banco Trelles file from Banesto, which it transformed into Investban and later into Banco Ibercorp. Jaime Soto had joined the group after leaving the presidency of Banco Urquijo Unión, a subsidiary of Hispano Americano, from which they bought Sistema AF, an office furniture firm, with a loan from Urquijo himself.
Two months later, when going public, the shares were sold at 575% of face value when the purchase had been made at approximately 250%. The capital gains allowed to return the credit and distribute the rest. For its part, Sistemas AF, once it was placed on the Stock Market, was emptied of its essential activity and became Sistemas Financieros, a company holding shares.
But the Gulf War hit Ibercorp and SF. There was a forward flight amid the fall in prices. The idea was to try a merger between Banco Ibercorp, the securities company and SF and proceed with a new placement. The operation contemplated repurchasing SF shares for treasury stock. He got frustrated when he was already underway. Some clients, who had risked large sums, recovered the money, but others lost significant amounts, including Boyer and his wife, Isabel Preysler, Rubio and De la Concha y Soto themselves.
The supervisory body of the Stock Exchange, the CNMV, then requested a list of the clients and De la Concha drew up a list in which Rubio and Boyer appeared with their second surnames (M. Jiménez and Miguel Salvador). In another later, Rubio did not appear, although it was learned that the firm Shaff Invesments, whose administrators were his sister María Teresa, his brother-in-law and his cousin, was involved in the business.
Mariano Rubio continued in office until his term expired in July 1992. Two years later the existence of a secret account with 130 million that De la Concha managed was published.
The scandal involved the Minister of Agriculture, Vicente Albero, who also had an opaque account with De la Concha, as well as the former Francoist minister, former governor and former vice president of Banesto José María López de Letona, from whom De la Concha had bought the token. of the Trelles.
Tax debts amounting to 1,600 million pesetas surfaced.
De la Concha, Soto and Tamayo were disqualified from positions of responsibility in financial institutions for five years.
Economy fined Ibercorp 1,300 million for price manipulation, simulation of transfer of shares between people and resistance to inspection.
2000
Terra
Office building occupied by Terra, on Paseo de la Castellana 92. PHOTO: Uly Martin
Juan Villalonga
Among other actions at Telefónica, Villalonga imported into Spain the stock options (options on shares for executives) that made many of his team rich, and he dedicated himself to buying companies and founding others (Telefónica Data and Telefónica Empresa).
But the most daring was the creation in 1998 of Telefónica Interactiva (Terra) amid a growing technology bubble.
Those years were characterized by financial exuberance, as the former president of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, and easy money. In Spain, one of the most striking examples was that of Terra Networks, an internet company created in 1998 by Telefónica, in front of which José María Aznar had placed his colleague Juan Villalonga after the electoral victory of 1996 with the aim of ending privatization.
The impulsive manager, belonging to a business family that had grown under Franco, took the subsidiary public a year later at 11.81 euros per share (it was already priced in euros) and the underwriting banks managed to get their clients to enter determined to buy . In three months, the price shot up to 157.65 euros. And, just as quickly, value faded, ruining many small investors, who quarantined new technologies. In October 2004, the share was trading at 2.75 euros, forcing Telefónica to assume control and remove it from the Stock Market to dedicate it to Internet content and services.
By then he had disappeared from the Villalonga group, which was forced to resign in July 2000. However, just months before leaving, he carried out two other operations. On the one hand, through Terra, it bought the Lycos portal for 9,700 million euros (in 2004 it would be sold for less than 100); on the other, it acquired Endemol, a Dutch television production company that created the
Big Brother
program
, for almost 5.5 billion euros, which was considered an excessive price premium that ended up in court. In 2007 it was sold to Mediaset for less than half (2,629 million).
Terra meant the bursting of the dot-
com
bubble in Spain
and Villalonga's passage through Telefónica is seen as a slowdown to take advantage of the opportunities in the sector, as has been criticized by both those who preceded him and those who followed him.
In July 2000, after the second elections won by Aznar, he was replaced by César Alierta, who changed the group's structure for product lines and charted exponential growth in the company's most golden age.
2001
Gescartera
Dossiers and stenographic transcripts of the Gescartera case.
PHOTO: Gorka Lejarcegi
Antonio Camacho placeholder image
Camacho, a boy of humble origins from the Madrid neighborhood of Usera, created Gescartera, a Stock Exchange company that had several bishoprics and archbishoprics among its clients, which earned him the appeal of "the convents broker." Its ramifications also reached executives of the CNMV and senior officials of the PP Government, which caused a parliamentary commission to investigate the case.
In the stock market, the Gescartera case exploded in 2001, a stock exchange and portfolio management company that starred in a huge scandal due to the disappearance of more than 18,000 million pesetas (about 110 million euros) with more than 2,000 affected, most of them small investors, but also legal persons such as the Police Mutual Fund, the Orphans of the Civil Guard, the Once Foundation, Manos Unidas, San Pablo CEU and various bishoprics and archbishoprics.
At the head of society was Antonio Camacho, a boy of humble origins in the Madrid neighborhood of Usera who became known as
the convents broker.
because of the relationship he forged with the Church. Camacho had founded Gescartera in 1992 together with his father (a former Banesto employee), a very religious man with a strong connection to Catholic institutions. But the money of these prominent clients was not reinvested in securities. Camacho Jr. stood out for a supersonic life train: several cars, some luxury; flats in expensive neighborhoods in Madrid; a chalet in La Moraleja; escorts; drivers; a collection of Armani suits ... And at the same time as his portfolio, his social relationships grew. He divorced his first wife and began a relationship with Laura Morey, daughter of the singer Jaime Morey, who was hired by Gescartera as a commercial.
The firm was intervened by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), which had been investigating the company since 1998 amid internal disagreements between several managers and the supervisory director, David Vives, who was withdrawn from the investigation by the leadership and of the position. But the fraud had already been uncovered. The president of the organization, Pilar Valiente, had to resign for having had relationships with Gescartera that went beyond what was strictly professional (she would later emerge unscathed). Also the vice president of the CNMV, the ex-PP deputy Luis Ramallo, acknowledged that he had worked in his notary office for the signature and exchanged gifts with Camacho. Enrique Giménez-Reyna, whose sister Pilar was the president of the company, was forced to resign as Secretary of State for Finance.The plot concocted by Camacho also involved other senior officials and former senior officials of the CNMV, such as the secretary of the council, Antonio Alonso Ureba.
El fiscal consideró que, en los nueve años de actividad, Gescartera se había dedicado a defraudar a sus clientes desviando fondos a sociedades fantasmas y funcionando con prácticas piramidales. Antonio Camacho, que había sido detenido e ingresado en prisión sin fianza, sería condenado en juicio oral en 2008 a 11 años de cárcel por apropiación indebida y falsedad documental. Salió de prisión en 2016, divorciado de Morey y sin la opulencia de antaño. Se fue a vivir con su madre al piso de protección oficial de su barrio de Usera desde donde trató de ejercer como abogado, oficio para el que se había preparado entre rejas.
The political significance of the case forced the constitution of a parliamentary investigation commission, after which Congress approved an opinion that exempted the Aznar government from any responsibility with the votes in favor of PP, CiU and Coalición Canaria.
2008
Martinsa-Fadesa
An architect from Martinsa on some land in Arganda del Rey (Madrid).
PHOTO: Cristóbal Manuel
Fernando Martin
Martín took Martinsa to the highest levels by making it the first real estate agency in the country in July 2016 after buying the Galician Fadesa from the businessman Manuel Jove for 4,000 million, who in his subsequent operations saw his Caramelo textile chain fail, with which he wanted emulate his neighbor Amancio Ortega, founder of Inditex.
De la burbuja tecnológica a la inmobiliaria, que produjo varias quiebras históricas. La principal fue Martinsa-Fadesa, propiedad del empresario vallisoletano Fernando Martín. Este formaba parte de la directiva del Real Madrid y tocó la gloria los tres meses de comienzos de 2006 en que presidió el club tras la dimisión de Florentino Pérez, que luego volvería a tomar las riendas del club.
Martinsa adquirió Fadesa al empresario gallego Francisco Jove por 4.045 millones de euros. El alto endeudamiento que generó la operación a la nueva compañía y el estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria y la posterior crisis financiera llevó a la nueva Martinsa-Fadesa a solicitar concurso voluntario de acreedores apenas año y medio después, en julio de 2008. La deuda ascendía a 7.200 millones, lo que la convirtió en el mayor concurso de acreedores de la historia del país.
La compañía superó el proceso concursal en tres años, gracias al calendario de pago de deuda a ocho años que en marzo de 2011 pactó con los bancos. No obstante, la duración de la crisis y la restricción crediticia impidió a la empresa generar liquidez para atender los pagos de deuda fijados. Ante la imposibilidad de convencer a los bancos, la sociedad pidió la liquidación en 2015. Ahora se encuentra en la última fase del plan de liquidación con la subasta de los últimos activos sin privilegios especiales para atender a los acreedores concursales ordinarios.
Fernando Martín había trazado un ambicioso plan, con proyectos en diversos lugares de España y el exterior. Sin embargo, en el inicio de la liquidación en 2015 quedaban pendientes de pago más de 5.800 millones de euros, entre activos con garantía inmobiliaria liquidados, créditos subordinados y un crédito ordinario de 4.300 millones. Se ha procedido a la liquidación, por adjudicaciones de activos en pago, por importe de más de 3.000 millones.
Martinsa-Fadesa formaba parte del denominado G-14, grupo de inmobiliarias que se creó en 2007 con los reyes del ladrillo que dominaban el mercado. Además de Martinsa-Fadesa, en este selecto grupo figuraban Colonial, Chamartín, Hercesa, Metrovacesa, Nozar, Parquesol, Rayet, Realia, Renta Corporación, Restaura, Vallehermoso y Reyal Urbis. La crisis de 2008 hizo estragos y el grupo poco a poco se fue desintegrando.
A Martinsa le siguió, cinco años después, Reyal Urbis, que estalló con una deuda cercana a los 4.300 millones, entre pagos a proveedores e intereses, y 420 empleados. El principal acreedor de la empresa presidida por Rafael Santamaría era el banco malo (Sareb), con 700 millones en créditos de Bankia, Novagalicia Banco, Banco de Valencia, Liberbank y Caja Duero-Caja España, antiguas cajas que, junto a otros bancos como el Popular, habían apostado fuerte por el ladrillo.
Reyal Urbis appears as the main business debtor in the list of defaulters published by the Treasury last June with 341 million, ahead of the construction company Isolux Corsán, which in 2017 starred in another business crash with a hole of 3.8 billion.
The third place on that list is occupied by the real estate Nozar, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009 with a liability of 1,400 million.
Martinsa also appears on the list in 27th place.
2010
Marsans
Concentration of Air Comet workers in front of the headquarters of Marsans Viajes, also owned by Gerardo Díaz Ferrán.
PHOTO: Luis Sevillano
Gerardo Diaz Ferran
Díaz Ferrán trató de utilizar la patronal como escudo, comenzó a dar sablazos a sus amigos y dirigentes empresariales, con los que se reunía en un restaurante de su propiedad. Se resistía a dejar su cargo en la CEOE. Y no lo hizo. Simplemente convocó elecciones en noviembre de 2010, en las que le sustituyó el dirigente catalán Juan Rosell.
Otro caso paradigmático fue el de Gerardo Díaz Ferrán (DF), un empresario que había heredado de su padre una empresa de autobuses interurbanos, en la que con 12 años hacía de cobrador y que pasó a dominar un emporio turístico junto a su socio, Gonzalo Pascual. Con él creó Trapsa en 1967 y posteriormente constituyeron Trapsatur, la primera agencia de viajes mayorista. Su gran salto se produjo con la compra de Viajes Marsans en 1985 al antiguo grupo público INI (Instituto Nacional de Industria).
Los dos socios entraron en el sector aéreo a través de Spanair, que luego venderían, Air Comet y la compra a la Sociedad Española de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI) en 2001 de Aerolíneas Argentinas, que les fue expropiada por el Gobierno de Cristina Fernández en 2008. El grupo, denominado Marsans aunque sin una denominación societaria específica, era un entramado incomprensible de más de 40 unidades cuyo croquis Díaz Ferrán tenía siempre a mano para poder entenderlo.
DF se convirtió en un modelo de empresario aguerrido y visionario, que seguía un típico manual: viviendas de lujo en Madrid y Mallorca, donde navegaba en yate privado; finca en Toledo, donde celebraba cacerías de relumbrón (en alguna participó el Rey emérito); se codeaba con la derecha madrileña, especialmente con la entonces presidenta de la Comunidad, Esperanza Aguirre. Llegó a presidir la Cámara de Comercio y la patronal madrileña CEIM entre 2002 y 2007, además de asumir la vicepresidencia de la CEOE. Mientras, su socio controlaba la patronal turística.
Tenía, además, un cartel de hombre abierto y hábil negociador, que se llevaba bien con el Gobierno socialista y los sindicatos. Quizá estas dotes impulsaron a José María Cuevas, el veterano presidente de la gran patronal CEOE a elegirle como sucesor en 2007, cuando decidió dejar vacante el puesto en el que llevaba 23 años tras sufrir algunos problemas de salud. Su candidatura, propuesta por Cuevas, se impuso por nueve votos a dos frente a la de Santiago Herrero. Pero el veterano dirigente no tardó mucho en arrepentirse. Díaz Ferrán le ninguneó hasta el punto de que le negó la asistencia a una reunión de la cúpula a la que se presentó como presidente de honor.
Díaz Ferrán se hizo fuerte en la patronal mientras crecían los problemas en su grupo. Tras un encontronazo en La Moncloa en 2009 con el presidente José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, en medio de una crisis galopante, apareció una información que aseguraba que había incumplido el pago de un crédito a Caja Madrid, de cuyo consejo de administración era miembro. A eso se unió que un juez de Londres paralizó Air Comet por el impago del alquiler de aviones, lo que supuso que muchos clientes que pensaban volar en Navidad a Latinoamérica se quedaran en tierra.
Su imagen ya no levantó cabeza. Los proveedores exigieron el prepago de billetes, la tesorería se deterioró, la aseguradora del grupo fue intervenida, los empleados (más de 24.000) comenzaron a no cobrar las nóminas... El 3 de diciembre de 2012 fue detenido, acusado de alzamiento de bienes, concurso fraudulento continuado, blanqueo de capitales e integración en organización criminal, cargos de los que se declaró culpable en julio de 2015 ante la Audiencia Nacional, aceptando una condena de cinco años y medio y una multa de 1,2 millones. Además de por el vaciamiento de Marsans, fue juzgado por fraude a Hacienda en la compra de Aerolíneas Argentinas en 2001, por la que fue condenado a pagar 99 millones.
Entre las personas cercanas a DF siempre estuvo Arturo Fernández, que también fue presidente de la Cámara, de la patronal madrileña y vicepresidente de la CEOE. Le conocían en los círculos políticos y empresariales como “el noveno consejero” de la Comunidad de Madrid por su cercanía con los presidentes Esperanza Aguirre e Ignacio González. Pero el sobrenombre que más se ajustaba era el de Rey del Catering. Su empresa, Grupo Arturo Cantoblanco, copaba gran parte de los contratos de restauración de organismos públicos (Congreso de los Diputados, Asamblea de Madrid, Ifema, Teatro Real, RTVE, Telemadrid, la mayor parte de los ministerios, varios hospitales y algunas sedes de grandes empresas), en los que servía más de 50.000 comidas al día.
It had 150 establishments and more than 3,000 employees on the payroll;
But in 2017 he went into a spin and into liquidation while he, who turned his grandfather's hunting weapons company into a large hospitality business, faced a debt with the Treasury of more than 20 million.
He was involved in the Punic Operation on irregular financing of the Madrid PP and was convicted of spending 38,777 euros with the
Caja Madrid
black card
, money that he returned.
2012
Bankia
A Bankia branch in the center of Madrid.
PHOTO: Jaime Villanueva
Rodrigo Rato
La gestión de Rato, que había pasado por ser un eficaz vicepresidente del Gobierno, quedó algo más que en entredicho. Manejó con mano caprichosa la entidad, dando lugar a escándalos que le llevaron a prisión, como el uso fraudulento de las tarjetas black; la salida a Bolsa de Bankia, por la que quedó absuelto, o los contratos de publicidad, aún pendientes de juicio. Al también exdirector gerente del FMI se le acusa de los delitos de blanqueo de dinero y de fraude continuado a Hacienda.
La implicación de las cajas en el boom inmobiliario las condujo a una situación insostenible cuando estalló la burbuja en 2008, lo que obligó a abordar su reestructuración. Del casi centenar de cajas que había a principios de los años noventa se había pasado a unas 45 en una primera reconversión en aquellos años. En la segunda, con la Gran Recesión, se optó por la fusión fría en las llamadas SIP (Sistema Institucional de Protección) con el objeto de escudarse y de que las bien gestionadas se quedaran con las otras.
Una SIP fue el Banco Financiero y de Ahorros (BFA), formado por Caja Madrid, la valenciana Bancaja y cinco cajas provinciales, cuya marca comercial fue Bankia. La preponderancia de Caja Madrid y Bancaja permitió que la operación fuera tutelada por el PP, que gobernaba en Madrid y Valencia, y que pusiera en la presidencia a Rodrigo Rato, exvicepresidente del Gobierno, y en la vicepresidencia a José Luis Olivas, expresidente de la Generalitat valenciana.
Resultó que la suma de las entidades dio resultado negativo y, por mucho que Rato y su equipo trataran de taparlo, no tardaron en romperse las costuras. Hasta tal punto que el Gobierno de Mariano Rajoy tuvo que nacionalizar BFA a primeros de mayo de 2012. El banco recibió casi 24.000 millones de euros para su saneamiento a través del Fondo de Reconversión Ordenada Bancaria (FROB). De esta forma, el Estado pasó a controlar el 62% del capital de Bankia, participación que, tras la reciente absorción por parte de CaixaBank, se ha diluido al 15%.
El banco tuvo que reformular sus cuentas de 2011, que arrojaron unas pérdidas de 3.318 millones de euros, las segundas mayores de la historia de la banca, solo por detrás de los 3.510 millones de Banesto de 1993 (entonces en pesetas: 584.000 millones). Unas semanas antes, Rato había declarado unos beneficios de 439 millones.
Since May 2012, Bankia has been in the hands of a new team led by José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, an executive with a very good sign in the sector who had left the post of CEO of BBVA in 2009 after disagreements with the president, Francisco González.
The entity regained its pulse and has ended up merging in 2021 with CaixaBank, fulfilling an old aspiration of Isidro Fainé, patriarch of the Catalan firm.
The integration, however, has led to the departure of several thousand employees in a traumatic measure that led the workers to lengthy negotiations and days of strikes.
2013
Pescanova
Headquarters of the fishing company Grupo Pescanova, in Chapela (Redondela, Metropolitan Area of Vigo).
PHOTO: Óscar Corral
Manuel Fernandez de Sousa
Fernández de Sousa fue juzgado por los delitos de falseamiento de cuentas, estafa, abuso de información relevante y un delito continuado de falsedad en documento mercantil. No obstante, tuvo la valentía de reclamar a Pescanova 663.119 euros por un supuesto despido improcedente.
En febrero de 2013, la firma gallega Pescanova decidía no publicar las cuentas de 2012. Todo un síntoma de un cataclismo que dos meses después se precipitaba, al acogerse al concurso voluntario de acreedores. Deloitte, su administrador concursal, detectó un agujero de 1.667 millones de euros y una deuda de 3.640 millones en la empresa de congelados más importante de España.
La compañía gallega se había hecho famosa por su campaña televisiva con el protagonista animado Rodolfo Langostino y había cubierto las mesas de toda España con sus merluzas y langostinos congelados. Pescanova había pasado de ser una empresa ejemplar en su sector a un modelo de crecimiento descontrolado que se estudia en las escuelas de negocio. Los problemas comenzaron en la década de los noventa del siglo XX, cuando la compañía acometió su expansión en actividades relacionadas con la acuicultura y con la creación de filiales en diversas partes del mundo.
La situación aguantó con créditos de la Xunta de Galicia y otras ayudas, hasta que en 2013 se produjo el preconcurso de acreedores. Al mismo tiempo se desveló que su presidente, Manuel Fernández de Sousa, hijo del fundador de la empresa en 1960, había vendido parte de su participación en los meses previos a que se tomara esta medida.
Luego se sucedió un largo proceso con entrada y salida de accionistas y cambio de presidente con la tutoría de Deloitte. En 2015, una junta aprobó un plan de rescate con apoyo de la banca acreedora, que significó una ampliación de capital y la refundación de la compañía con el nombre de Nueva Pescanova y la presidencia de Jacobo González-Robatto, procedente del Banco Popular. Se dio entrada en el capital a los acreedores y logró volver a cotizar en junio de 2017.
Already in 2020 it was Abanca, the bank that brought together the old Galician savings banks, who took control of the company, with 80% of the capital, and changed the board.
A milestone in that recovery was the first ship commissioned after more than 30 years by the company, which distinguished itself by having the first and largest freezer ships in the world.
2017.
popular Bank
Several people walk past a Banco Popular branch.
PHOTO: Álvaro García
Angel Ron
Ron, who joined Popular in 1984 and had been president since 2004, had maintained the bank as the most profitable in the world in several years;
but it was unable or unable to control growth and lost its roles, mainly in the real estate sector, whose crisis toppled the bank.
Otro gran fiasco financiero se produjo con el Banco Popular. La excesiva exposición en créditos para negocios inmobiliarios y a pymes (segmento en que lideraba el mercado, con un 18% de cuota) llevó a una crisis de caballo a una de las grandes y más señeras entidades financieras, creada en 1926. El Popular fue el primer banco intervenido por el Mecanismo Único de Resolución europeo (MUR) por considerarlo inviable y fue adquirido por el Santander por un euro en 2017.
La intervención y venta del Popular, que se produjo después de que el valor cayera más del 50% en Bolsa, originó un rosario de reclamaciones de antiguos inversores, accionistas minoritarios y asociaciones de consumidores, que llegaron a la Audiencia Nacional y al Tribunal de Justicia de la UE. La Junta de Resolución acordó que no se compensara a los accionistas y acreedores porque habrían sufrido mayores pérdidas de haber seguido el procedimiento de insolvencia.
Mientras tanto, el juez de la Audiencia Nacional Fernando Andreu, tras petición de la Fiscalía Anticorrupción, admitió las querellas contra los expresidentes Ángel Ron y Emilio Saracho por la ampliación de capital de 2016. Se les acusó de los delitos de falsedad, administración desleal, y apropiación indebida.
In February 2017, Ron was forced to leave his position, which Emilio Saracho, a former Santander employee, assumed.
He left with a 24 million pension, although without compensation, which he claimed without success.
In 2020, the CNMV fined him along with seven former directors for "omitting data and presenting misleading information" in their annual reports between 2013 and 2015 on savings and payment systems by resolution of executive directors.
Santander took the reins in the middle of the storm and opened the new headquarters in Madrid that Ron never opened.
In this way, the Cantabrian bank had been left with four of the seven majors (Banesto, Central, Hispano and Popular) in the face of the fight with BBVA.
2021
Abengoa
Abengoa solar plant in the Sevillian town of Sanlúcar la Mayor.
PHOTO: Paco Puentes
Felipe Benjumea
Benjumea fue un adelantado que apostó por una estrategia ambiciosa que le llevó a estar en más de 80 países y aventurarse en inversiones arriesgadas, como la planta solar de Sanlúcar la Mayor (Sevilla), que convirtieron a Abengoa en un modelo universal alabado como ejemplo por el mismísimo Barack Obama. Pero, posiblemente por una ambición desmedida, aquel templo al sol se nubló. Y Benjumea pasó de ser un semidiós a ser tratado como un iluminado.
El último caso, que viene de lejos y con un pronóstico impredecible, es el de Abengoa. Felipe Benjumea Llorente, uno de los dos varones del total de 13 hijos que tuvo el fundador de la empresa sevillana, Javier Benjumea Puigcerver, tuvo la osadía de convertir la firma que había creado su padre en 1941 en un imperio de las renovables cuando todavía no había el clamor actual por este tipo de energía.
Todo ocurrió casi de repente. El verano de 2015, cuando la calma vacacional mandaba en los mercados, las acciones de Abengoa se derrumbaron. Se destaparon graves problemas en el grupo y comenzaron entonces unas negociaciones con los acreedores, encabezados por el Banco Santander, para buscar una salida y evitar males mayores. Se encontró, como solución de urgencia, la entrada de Gestamp con el 25% del capital. Pero la firma de la familia Riberas dio marcha atrás y la entidad andaluza se precipitó al preconcurso de acreedores con un pasivo de más de 27.000 millones y una deuda financiera superior a los 9.000.
En paralelo, la banca forzó el abandono de Benjumea, mientras se comenzaba a diseñar la reestructuración de la deuda. La compañía entró en un proceso de agotamiento, con varios cambios de presidente y una segunda reestructuración, que planteó una quita del 95%. La pandemia acabó de rematar la situación y llevó al grupo a las puertas de un tercer rescate, en el que se implicó el Gobierno a través del Instituto de Crédito Oficial y la pública Cesce (Compañía Española de Seguros de Crédito a la Exportación). Sin embargo, el rechazo de la Junta de Andalucía, que no vio viable aportar los 20 millones que se le pedían, alargó la agonía hasta que, más de cinco años después del estallido de la crisis aquel verano, Abengoa SA presentó el concurso de acreedores en febrero de este año.
De poco valieron los esfuerzos de los acreedores por evitar una pelea a muerte entre el equipo gestor, dirigido por Gonzalo Urquijo, y los accionistas minoritarios, agrupados en AbengoaShares, que en junta extraordinaria forzaron la salida de aquel de la presidencia y la convocatoria de otra que nunca llegó a celebrarse por la maniobra de última hora del nuevo consejo presidido por Juan Pablo López-Bravo. El juez admitió el recurso presentado por este e impidió el desembarco de los minoritarios, comandados por el inversor Clemente Fernández, que había sustituido al carismático Marcos de Quinto. Las espadas siguieron en alto con la solicitud de 249 millones al fondo de rescate que gestiona la Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI) tras pactar la entrada del fondo buitre californiano TerraMar, a lo que se opone ese grupo y que todavía está por dilucidar.
El último episodio lo acaba de escribir la Fiscalía de Sevilla, que ha encontrado indicios de delito en la gestión de Abengoa desde que se hizo la primera reestructuración financiera. Eso llevará a investigar a Gonzalo Urquijo, en la actualidad consejero delegado de Talgo, y a su sucesor, Juan Pablo López-Bravo. Esta decisión se encadena con la del Registro Mercantil de obligar a realizar junta general de accionistas a petición de AbengoaShares tras haberse negado López-Bravo a convocarla.
- Créditos
- Coordinación y formato: Guiomar del Ser y Brenda Valverde
- Dirección de arte y diseño: Fernando Hernández
- Maquetación: Itziar Amor