Mariano Rajoy's Spanish government is considering passing a statutory order that would enable companies to leave Catalonia without having to organising a shareholders' meeting, the news agency Reuters has reported this Thursday. This would involve a decree developing an amendment to the 2015 Law of Listed Companies.
The rule could be approved in this Friday's cabinet meeting. For the moment the Economy Ministry is neither confirming nor denying the reports.
The news comes the same day as the directors of Banco Sabadell, Spain's fifth-largest banking group, approved moving their headquarters to Alicante in Valencia without calling an extraordinary shareholders' meeting, as the group's statutes allow this option.
As a general rule, changing a company's registered office can be decided by its board of directors, unless there's an express mention in its statutes requiring a shareholders' meeting to be called.
This is the case with the statutes of banking group La Caixa. As such, some reports suggest that this new measure from the Spanish government could be aimed at helping them move, the largest Catalan banking group, avoiding them needing to agree the decision in a shareholders' meeting.