Mon, Dec 07, 2015 page14

• Abengoa struggle casts cloud on jobs

  HIDDEN DEBT: Creditors, unions and the Spanish government are still trying to get a clearer understanding of the financial situation facing the renewable energy giant

  • AFP, MADRID
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  As Spain’s flagship renewable energy giant Abengoa teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, concerns are mounting over the fate of thousands of employees and its numerous projects around the world, just weeks ahead of crux general elections.

  The group filed for protection from its creditors late last month, giving it four months to find a solution to its astronomical debt or go bankrupt and become Spain’s biggest-ever corporate failure.

  Since then, creditors, unions and the government have been trying to get a clearer idea of the group’s financial situation, and a grouping of seven banks has appointed auditors KPMG to comb through the accounts of the company and its more than 600 subsidiaries, according to the Bloomberg financial news agency.

  

  A tower belonging to Abengoa Solar is pictured at the Solucar solar park in Sanlucar la Mayor, near the Andalusian capital of Seville, in southern Spain, on Nov. 30.

  Photo: Reuters

  “They are very indebted ... their total liabilities could be more than 25 billion euros [US$27.19 billion],” Spanish Minister of Industry Jose Manuel Soria said on Friday.

  As the Dec. 20 general elections approach, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has yet to comment on the possibility of a Spanish company that employs 28,700 people globally — including nearly 7,000 in his own country — going down.

  The government has ruled out any form of state bailout, with Spanish Minister of Economy and Competitiveness Luis de Guindos stressing the need “to find out exactly what the accounting and debt situation of the company is.”

  The world player in solar and wind power, biofuels and water management says it had a gross debt of nearly 9 billion euros at the end of September.

  However, lawyers who filed a legal complaint against the board on Monday say it could stand at 25 billion euros.

  “Investors have been burnt by other bankruptcies in Spain, when debt was found hidden away,” ISM Capital analyst Antoine Bourgault said.

  He pointed to the surprise, high-profile bankruptcy of Spanish packaged seafood giant Pescanova in 2013, which had secretly amassed a pile of debt.

  Unions too are waiting, worried about mass layoffs.

  Francisco Carbonero, head of the CCOO union in the southern region of Andalucia where Abengoa is headquartered — said he was holding out for the KPMG report.

  “For the moment, they have not come out with a redundancy plan,” he said, adding that a large number of short-term contracts had not been renewed over the past few weeks.

  The group, which is present in about 20 countries, makes nearly 87 percent of its turnover abroad — with North America its largest market, followed closely by South America.

  Already in Brazil, unions are concerned, with the Sintepav grouping that represents workers in the country’s construction sector saying it is expecting 5,000 jobs to be cut.

  Spain’s banking sector, which is only just emerging from the devastating crisis that saw it rescued with a 41 billion euro bailout, could also be hurt.

  “Banks’ bottom-line profits this year will likely fall short of our forecasts, as they start provisioning for the potential losses they could face,” the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency said.

  “Given the company’s large scale ... and its high leverage ... Abengoa is a significant exposure for most of the Spanish banks we rate,” it said.

  It added that the pressure was not exclusively on Spanish banks, as the group also had access to foreign lenders given its large footprint around the world.

  Small-scale shareholders fear they will get burnt again.

  “After having overcome the financial crisis, with the hard costs that implied for individual savers, and having witnessed fraud directly linked to bad business practices, it seemed that the wind was changing,” said Javier Cremades, head of Aemec, an association representing minority shareholders. “Unfortunately that has not been the case,” he wrote in the El Pais daily.
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