Spanish lender Unicaja has received green light from its shareholders to advance with the proposed merger with its local rival Liberbank.
The deal is expected to create fifth biggest bank in the country in terms of assets, reported Reuters.
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Separately, the proposed transaction was also green lighted by Liberbank shareholders.
As agreed, Liberbank will merge with and into Unicaja to create a combined lender with €110bn ($129bn) in assets.
The banks also expect that the transaction will enable them to save €192m per year annually and achieve a capital ratio of 12.4% after incurring €1.2bn of merger-related costs.
Liberbank CEO Manuel Menendez was quoted by the news agency as saying to the shareholders: “The (merged) bank expects to be more profitable and efficient, which will result in higher organic capital generation to finance its growth, and higher recurring dividends.”
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By GlobalDataNotably, Liberbank and Unicaja terminated their merger negotiations in 2019 following disagreements. They resumed discussions last year.
Once the deal completes, the number of banks in Spain will further reduce to ten. The figure was around 55 before the 2008 financial crisis.
Last week, two other Spanish lenders Bankia and Caixabank completed their merger to create the largest domestic lender.
The transaction received green light from the Spanish competition regulator CNMC earlier this month with some conditions.
