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Priority given to HQ changes

Business register prioritised changes of corporate headquarters over setting up new companies, while minister denies existence of report hiding concerns of firms

The Catalan enterprise minister, Àngels Chacón, yesterday revealed that a year ago, during the Spanish government’s offensive against the push for independence, various international operators complained to her department about difficulties in processing documentation for creating businesses in Catalonia. According to Chacón, the reason was that the business register was giving priority to applications from firms looking to change their corporate headquarters, to the detriment of new businesses.

Chacón made the revelations during her appearance before the Parliament’s economy and business committee, ascribing the events to efforts by the Spanish government under Mariano Rajoy, together with the decree accelerating the process for firms to change their HQs by allowing them to bypass shareholders, as well as the pressure exerted by the withdrawal of public funds from Catalan banks.

The committee was convened at the request of the Catalunya en Comú Podem group after reports in the Eldiario.es online newspaper about the existence of an internal report by the enterprise department with arguments, according to Eldiario.es, for denying the concerns of businesses.

However, Chacón not only denied the existence of the report, but also any intention to silence or hide the concerns of businesses, especially those planning to invest in Catalonia. “If the minister [at the time] had such a report, I never saw it, nor signed it, nor worked on it,” insisted Chacón, who said that the department shared all the information it had on the attitude of businesses.

Following the independence referendum on October 1, some 2,500 companies decided to move their HQs outside Catalonia. Most of these, some 80%, were firms in the service sector, particularly finance and energy.

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