Abertis

Abertis Infraestructuras, SA is a Spanish corporation founded in 2003, with headquarters in Madrid and operational headquarters in Barcelona, dedicated to the management of toll roads. It is the first toll road concessionaire in Spain and the world's leading operator by number of kilometers managed, distributed in fourteen countries in Europe and Latin America. Previously it was also dedicated to the management of telecommunications infrastructures.

History

Origins in Autopistas, Concesionaria Española S.A.

A.C.E.S.A. (Autopistas, Concesionaria Española S.A.) was born in 1967, inaugurating the first toll highway in Spain in July 1969, Montgat-Mataró (formerly A-19). In the following years, the concession was awarded for the La Junquera-Salou section of the AP-7 (including the B-30), the Zaragoza-El Vendrell section of the AP-2 and the highways of the Barcelona metropolitan area: A-16 Barcelona–El Vendrell, A-17 Barcelona–Granollers, A-18 Barcelona–Manresa and A-19 Barcelona–Mataró.

Abertis Foundation

Abertis Infraestructuras became effective in January 2003, after its constitution in December 2002, as a result of the merger of the two largest highway concessionaires in the country, Acesa and Áurea, constituting the most important Spanish infrastructure management company of transport and communications, in a strategy aimed at competing at a continental level. It became the third largest motorway management company in Europe, behind the Italian company Autostrade and the French company ASF. In 2003, Abertis had a presence in more than 10 countries through 50 subsidiary companies. That same year, Acesa's telecommunications subsidiary was renamed Abertis Telecom.

Acquisitions in France and vetoes in Italy

In December 2005, the French government selected the consortium led by Abertis to acquire 75.7% (100% since April 2017) of the capital of the highway concession company Sanef (Société des Autoroutes du Nord et de l'Est de la France), the third largest operator by managed kilometers of motorways in France.

In April 2006, Abertis and Autostrade (currently Atlantia), agreed to a merger between the two, in which the distribution among the largest shareholders of the resulting company would be: Schemaventotto (Benetton family), (25%), ACS (12.5%), La Caixa (11.7%), Caixa Catalunya (2.9%) and Sitreba (Bancaja, CAM and Unicaja), 2.8% of the capital. After months of threats from the Italian government, to rescind concessions to Autostrade in the event of the integration of both companies, in August 2006 the veto was made official by the Italian highway regulator ANAS, which finally blocked the operation by introducing a change in the Italian regulations on road concessions. The obstacles and reluctance of the transalpine executive against the resulting majority Spanish shareholding in this merger, were added to those of July 2005, with the impediments to the takeover bid proposed by the Spanish entity BBVA on the Italian entity BNL, imposed by the Bank of Italy, mobilizing several Italian companies to launch a counter-bid to finally prevent the BBVA project. In December 2006 and despite warnings from the European Union in both operations, contrary to the protectionist maneuvers of the Italian government, Autostrade and Abertis they announced, after the obstacles, their resignation to the merger.

In 2018 Atlantia and Grupo ACS took control of the Spanish concessionaire, after a takeover bid to acquire the capital in the hands of minority shareholders. Following this operation, Abertis ceased to be listed on the Spanish stock market after 16 years of doing so, since its constitution.

Telecommunications infrastructures

In 2000, Acesa Telecom (later Abertis Telecom, currently Cellnex Telecom) acquired 52% of the shares of Tradia, giving rise to the company that would later become the leader in telecommunications infrastructure management in Spain. In 2003, the Auna spin-off process ended, giving rise to the integral telecommunications operator of Retevisión. Since 2006, Abertis Telecom (Cellnex) has been the concessionaire operator of the Digital Terrestrial Television signals service in Spain at a national level. On May 7, 2015, the company's telecommunications subsidiary, Abertis Telecom, began trading on stock market, after a restructuring in which the company separated from its parent company Abertis and changed its name to Cellnex Telecom. In 2017 Abertis increased its stake in the satellite operator Hispasat to 90.74%, after acquiring 33.69 % of Eutelsat. On July 12, 2018, Abertis closed the sale of Cellnex Telecom to Connect for 1,489 million euros. On February 12, 2019, Abertis announced that it would sell its 89.7% stake in Hispasat to Red Eléctrica de España for 949 million euros, finalizing the sale on October 3, 2019 for 933 million euros. With the sale of Cellnex Telecom and Hispasat, Abertis now focuses solely on highway management.

Illegalities

In 2007 the European Commission filed an appeal against Spain before the Court of Justice of the European Union, for the award in 1999 of the concession to the company Iberpistas belonging to Abertis for the construction, maintenance and operation of the connections of the AP-6 motorway with Segovia and Ávila materialized in the AP-61 and AP-52.

In 2010, the Court of Justice of the European Union condemned the public tender carried out by the Ministry of Public Works (under the then direction of the popular Rafael Arias Salgado) for works from the 2000s, thus declaring illegal the concession and bidding for the works and the consequent extension of the toll concession, which ended in 2018. Some works that, however, were carried out while the Court was studying the case and later, once these were concluded, it issued judgment.

All this fully affects the town of San Rafael, whose population has spent years protesting and demanding a solution to the huge number of vehicles that crowd and block the N-6 crossing as it passes through the town., because it is the free alternative to the toll of the AP-6. For this reason, the town sues the Ministry of Development for the end of the toll of the AP-6, which expired in 2018 and whose extension was condemned by the CJUE, or the construction of a bypass as was already done with the town of Guadarrama in 2005.

Although the government was obliged to set the end date of the toll between November 18, 2024 and November 18, 2029, it decided to set it on November 19, 2029, 30 years after its concession, extending it in 2020 to the maximum until leaving it illegally out of time by one day.

Business Areas

Logo "Autopistas", its infrastructure division.

The group is dedicated to infrastructure management, mainly highways:

Current

Highways

• Autopists. Its subsidiary of road infrastructures, is the first concessionaire of the sector in Spain (67% of the country's concessions) and the first company in the world for the number of kilometres under concession. It is present in fourteen countries of Europe and Hispanic America.

It manages more than 8,300 kilometers in the world: 3,246 km in Brazil (which represents 17% of the total toll roads in the country), 1,760 in France (22% of the total), more than 1,500 in Spain (67% of the total) and 711 in Chile, among other countries.

Dealerships in Spain

Dealers in the rest of the world

Previous

Cellnex Telecom and Hispasat

• Telecommunications infrastructure. Abertis had majority shares in telecommunications management companies. In the field of terrestrial telecommunications, it had a participation in Cellnex Telecom, former Abertis Telecom, which the group took out in May 2015. It was also the largest shareholder with a participation of 90.8 per cent, of the Spanish satellite operator Hispasat, while the remaining 9.2 per cent was state-owned, through CDTI (1.8 per cent) and SEPI (7.41%).

Business structure

Shareholding

Society	% of participation
Atlantia	50%
ACS Group	30%
Hochtief	20%