Justice agrees with the Ruiz-Mateos and forces the State to recalculate the price of Rumasa 40 years later

The State will have to reappraise Rumasa's shares 40 years after their expropriation and faces the payment of multimillion-dollar compensation to the heirs of José María Ruiz-Mateos. In a sentence to which El Confidencial has had access, the Contentious Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) agrees with the businessman's family, who appealed at the hands of his widow, María Teresa Rivero Sánchez- Romate, and obliges the Ministry of Finance to make a new calculation taking into account “all the shares or social participations” of the holding company intervened.

According to the family, the value of the Rumasa Group exceeded 13,712 million euros at the time of the expropriation. The Ruiz-Mateos have been litigating in court for decades to try to obtain compensation. After its expropriation in 1983, the State Administration assessed the company negatively and set the price per share at zero euros. Since then, both the Ruiz-Mateos and several of the minority shareholders of their companies have been suing by the hundreds with unequal results.. The sentence is appealable before the Supreme Court (TS), which will have, in the end, the last word.

In fact, the Supreme Court later confirmed this negative calculation in several sentences, but the Supreme Court now concludes that this decision “had effective significance for minority third-party shareholders.”. In the case of the Ruiz-Mateos, and given their status as owners, the magistrates agree with Rivero and the businessman's children and order the State to make a new calculation taking into account “the total consolidation” of the business group from that first assessment.

For this, the Ministry of Finance will have to review all the procedures that have been carried out around the Rumasa companies in these four decades. According to the family, in some of these procedures a new valuation was produced that yielded a positive result regarding the shares of various companies, such as the cases of Banco de Albacete and Galerías Preciados..

The TSJM now orders the State to reassess the price of Rumasa's shares taking these new figures into account. In the opinion of the Ruiz-Mateos, the true value of the shares would not be zero euros, but that the conglomerate would exceed 13,500 million euros. If this appraisal is confirmed, they will be entitled to a million-dollar compensation.

“It was not possible to declare a negative net worth as proven,” argued the family regarding the agreement by which the share price was set at zero euros. “The definitive determination of the fair price of the shares of Rumasa SA, parent of the group, required taking into account the revisions of the fair prices of the companies owned by it, established by sentences pronounced at a later date”.

The resolution mentions the judgment handed down at the time by the Supreme Court and in which it was apparently determined that the fixing of the price at zero euros of the fair price to be paid by the State for the expropriation was correct.. However, it stresses that already then, in 2001, the high court recalled that it would be necessary to wait for the full consolidation of the results of the expropriated group, once the judicial resources were cleared up and proceed to include in the valuation a series of items or economic concepts and accountants. It referred, specifically, to the updating and consolidation of balance sheets.

The TSJM now recalls that what was decided is that “the result of the total consolidation process would have to be accepted, for which it would proceed in the manner established in the first instance judgments and that it was correct to defer the fixation to the execution of the sentence. of fair value, given the pending nature of other processes”. “This means that, in accordance with the judgment of the Supreme Court, a new valuation of the shares of Rumasa SA must be carried out in view of the consolidated balance sheet of the group, from which it follows that the claim of the actor,” he says.

The expropriation of Rumasa took place in 1983 during the presidency of the Government of Felipe González. The decision against the holding company was published in the BPE on February 24 at a time when the conglomerate was made up of more than 200 companies, including some twenty banks, and had more than 60,000 employees.