Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria. - ADR Aktie News

BBVA's hostile bid to take over fellow Spanish bank Banco Sabadell has ended after 18 months. Banco Sabadell shareholders representing 25.47% of the voting rights of the company accepted the takeover bid, a figure that fell short of the 30% that was required, Spain's National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) said in a Thursday (Oct.

Shares in BBVA rose 5.7% after it announced it would immediately resume share buybacks following its failure to convince Sabadell shareholders to back its 16.32 billion euro ($19.09 billion) hostile takeover bid, while shares in the smaller lender fell 6.5%.

The chairman of Spain's BBVA , Carlos Torres, said on Friday he would not resign despite the bank's failure to convince Sabadell shareholders to back its 16.32 billion euro ($19.1 billion) hostile takeover bid.

Shareholders representing just over a quarter of Sabadell's capital accepted BBVA's offer, falling short of the 30% required for the deal to go ahead.

Spain's BBVA said on Thursday its hostile takeover bid for smaller rival Sabadell failed as it could not secure at least 30% of its shares in a public tender offer earlier this month.

Sabadell shareholders voted heavily against Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria's (BBVA) takeover bid, revealing another level of uncertainty over one of Spain's highly publicised banking operations. More than 97% of the bank's client shareholders rejected the offer from BBVA, according to figures published Tuesday by the Catalan bank.

Spain's Sabadell said on Tuesday that 2.8% of its shareholders representing 30.8% of the bank's capital have accepted BBVA's 16.48 billion euro ($19.07 billion) hostile takeover bid.

Sabadell's second-largest investor, Zurich Insurance, said on Tuesday it would not back a hostile bid for the Spanish bank from bigger rival BBVA , as the two sides stepped up a war of words over whether BBVA's offer might prevail.