Agbar is a Spanish company dedicated to services, distribution or treatment of water. The company was founded in 1867 in Liège as Compagnie des Eaux de Barcelone by an investor from France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Catalonia

Catalonia

Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

 (Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

). The group is present in almost all the continents as North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. The headquarters are in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 and the chairman is Àngel Simon i Grimaldos.

Agbar is constituted by more than 230 companies and with more than 140 years of history. Agbar is worldwide leader as much in the scopes that constitute the essential axis of their activities related to the cycle of the water like in the sectors of activity that the new society demands, specially in those of services of health, certification, construction and communications networks.

A joint acquisition

Mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...

 bid by Suez (now Suez Environnement

Suez Environnement

Suez Environnement S.A. is a French-based utility company which operates largely in the water treatment and waste management sectors. Formerly an operating division of Suez, the company was spun out as a stand-alone entity as part of the merger to form GDF Suez on 22 July 2008. GDF Suez remains...

) and Criteria CaixaCorp

Criteria CaixaCorp

Caixabank, S.A. is a financial services company, controlled with an 81% stake by Spanish savings bank La Caixa...

, concluded in January 2008, resulted in the two companies controlling around 90% of Agbar's shares. Suez and Criteria have stated that they do not intend to delist Agbar from the Madrid Stock Exchange

Bolsa de Madrid

Bolsa de Madrid is the largest and most international of Spain's four regional stock exchanges that trade shares and convertible bonds and fixed income securities, and both government and private-sector debt...

, instead gradually increasing the free float percentage of the company's shares from ten to thirty percent with two years.