Banks try to save Pescanova

The future is up in the air for Pescanova, Spain's largest seafood packing company. Its financial backers (especially a group named G6 and comprised of Sabadell, Popular, Caixabank, BBVA, NGC and the Italian bank UBI Banca) are not happy with the plan that Pescanova came up with to avoid bankruptcy.

Instead, they want the company to liquidate and go public so that they can repurchase it through shares. This would ruin Pescanova's business, because a bankruptcy would cause it to lose fishing rights in prime areas and these are the base of its business. For this reason, foreign investors such as Ex-Im Bank, Morgan Stanley, City and Deutsche Bank want Pescanova to stay afloat. But this group only represents 20% of investors, and a 51% vote is needed to keep the company out of a bankruptcy hearing. Faced with this situation, the government has decided to take action. Both the Minister of Agriculture, Miguel Arias Cañete, and Chief Economic Officer Álvaro Nadal are working to prevent Pescanova from being sold.

Pescanova is the second-largest fishing corporation in the world, and the second-largest company in Galicia next to Inditex. A bankruptcy would lead to 12,000 job cuts (2,000 of these are in Galicia) and the loss of a key industry in the region. The damage would be irreparable for Spain, which has watched the economic crisis rip apart the nation's industry. If Pescanova sinks, then this is just one more major threat to the fragile recovery.