The private equity firm has finalized a deal to buy about a third of Deoleo, although the deal looks worse than it did previously according to the CNMV, which has focused on the excessively low price of 0.38 euros per share that the British company is offering. CVC is working through Ole Investment, a Dutch firm headquartered in Luxembourg and funded by money from Jersey, and island off the coast of Normandy, France.
This is the future for the largest producer of olive oil in the world and a key Spanish brand: being owned by a foreign company to escape paying taxes at home. CVC is following in the footsteps of big companies such as Microsoft and Google, which take advantage of disparate European tax laws in order to not pay them in all jurisdictions. In order to curb this practice, Brussels should find a way to create a common tax law across the entire region.