More on Ruiz Mateos

The Ruiz Mateos family has pocketed some 60 million euros from commissions linked to the fictitious buying and selling of shares in companies which mainly belonged to the family. These operations are nicknamed “operaciones palanca” or lever operations and are a mechanism used for decades to achieve liquidity and defray company costs.

This strategy has produced 3 million per year for the last 20 years, and was used by JM Ruiz Mateos to finance the running of Nueva Rumasa in Madrid, mainly loans and wages, according to the family’s ex-lawyer Joaquin Yvancos.

Operation Palanca, which Ruiz Mateos even announced in the press, consisted of faking the purchase of shares from annoying minority shareholders and managing the majority shareholders, who at the start had been offered a lower price than they had thought reasonable to sell up.

Jose Maria Ruiz Mateos

“This was a classic example of many family businesses, and Ruiz Mateos saw in it a juicy profit”, the lawyer explains in his book “An Ideal Family”.

Yvancos relates that Ruiz Mateos agreed with the minority shareholders to make them a fictitious offer for their shares which was higher than their real value, so that they could put pressure on the majority shareholders, who finally gave in and paid the inflated agreed price for the minority shares, exercising their right of preferential option, for fear that Nueva Rumasa might become a shareholder in their companies.