Celsa offers 400 million additional funds to the SEPI plan

He says it is the "last effort to save the boycott" of aid by the funds

BARCELONA, 9 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Celsa has offered the funds an additional 400 million euros to the plan of the State Industrial Participation Company (SEPI) linked to the development of the strategic plan due to "the immobility of the vulture funds in their negotiating position".

In a statement this Thursday, the company explained that it is making this offer to prevent the "obstruction" that it considers that the funds make to the arrival of public financing.

These additional 400 million, contributed by Celsa, are divided into a fixed amount and a variable amount determined based on the Ebitda reached between 2023 and 2030.

SEPI's public aid includes an item of 450 million euros for immediate repayment and 662 million euros over seven years.

The new amounts would be paid after the full repayment of the SEPI aid, so "they would not be detrimental to the recoverability of the public aid".

Likewise, the company has said that they do imply an additional effort and sacrifice from all other Celsa Group stakeholders within its circularity and sustainability strategy.

With the offer, the granting of public aid and the future of 30,000 jobs are at the expense of the decision of Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, SVP and Cross Ocean.

Celsa has affirmed that these funds did not finance Grupo Celsa, but rather bought its debt in the secondary market with enormous discounts of up to 90% and "they intended with the proposed offer to obtain average annual usurious returns, close to 80%".

The proposal has the unanimous support of the executive committee and the company's board of directors, and which places it as "the last effort to save the boycott of public aid" by the funds.

Both bodies consider that the claims of the funds "break the limits" of the correct use of public financing because they believe that it cannot be used as the basis of a speculative strategy.

In fact, the company has already denounced in a lawsuit filed in 2020 before the Courts of Justice of Spain, currently in process, that the claims of its creditor funds "were contrary to economic public order and the Law of repression of usury" .

The offer comes three days after the company also unanimously rejected the funds' proposal - which, according to Celsa, requires the creation of a new convertible instrument amounting to 900 million euros with an annual interest rate of 10% and issued outside of Spain-- because it is incompatible with public aid from SEPI.