Spain's inequality is due to lack of access to housing, Unicaja president says

Unicaja had its annual general shareholders' meeting on Thursday. In addition to approving the annual accounts, the dividend and the management of the board of directors, the Malaga-based financial group also addressed the partial renewal of the bank's governing body, changes to its bylaws and shareholder remuneration.

Beyond detailing all these issues, president José Sevilla shared his analysis of the Spanish economy and its challenges, focusing on two aspects in particular: housing and investment.

He highlighted the difficulties young people face in accessing housing. "There is broad consensus on the need to increase supply as the primary way to address the imbalance in the housing market. Experts indicate a housing deficit of over 700,000 units. All social and economic stakeholders, and certainly Unicaja, want to contribute to remedying this situation, which is probably the main cause of inequality in our country," Sevilla said. "A major housing pact in Spain would be necessary to increase the supply of and access to homeownership," he stated.

The second issue José Sevilla highlighted is "the sluggishness of private investment in Spain". "Since the pandemic, economic activity in our country has grown considerably. The weight of business credit as a percentage of GDP, however, has been decreasing, placing us well below the European average," Sevilla said, referring to a Funcas report, which estimates that private investment in real terms has fallen by 1.4 per cent in the last five years, contrasting sharply with a nearly 50 per cent increase in public investment.

Sevilla called for the development of "a medium- and long-term national strategy that incentivises investment, improves opportunities for business creation and growth and promotes the attraction of human and technological capital".

The meeting re-elected Miguel González Moreno and José Ramón Sánchez Serrano as directors and appointed María Nieves García Santos and María Isabel Martínez Torre-Enciso to replace Natalia Sánchez Romero and Juan Antonio Izaguirre Ventosa. All of them are proprietary directors of Fundación Unicaja, the largest shareholder of the financial group.

Other matters the meeting addressed include the modification of the entity's statutes to standardise the composition of the risk committee, so that, as in the rest of the committees, the majority of its members are independent directors, in addition to incorporating the possibility of holding general meetings exclusively online. Sevilla announced the intention of the entity to maintain the holding of ordinary meetings in a mixed format (in person and online) and reserve the possibility of exclusively online meetings for exceptional situations.

The last relevant internal item submitted for review is the new remuneration policy for the 2027-2029 period. Sevilla stated that the total cost of the board in 2025 amounted to 2.7 million euros. Of this amount, the remuneration corresponding to the directors in their capacity as such was 1.87 million euros, seven per cent lower than the maximum limit established in the current policy approved in 2023.

Looking ahead to 2026, Sevilla announced that directors' remuneration will increase by three per cent, in accordance with the current remuneration policy, which provides for an annual update based on the salary review percentage applicable to the company's employees. According to the proposed new policy, Sevilla said, "it updates the board's remuneration amounts to bring them closer to the average of comparable companies, although still maintaining a significant gap compared to those benchmarks".