Concept of State aid : The General Court of the European Union annuls two decisions of the Commission which qualified the possibility of tax amortisation of financial goodwill for foreign shareholding acquisitions by Spanish companies as State aid (Autogrill España / Banco Santander / Stantusa)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. A Spanish law of 2001 provides that in the case of the acquisition of a holding by a company taxable in Spain in a foreign company, the goodwill resulting from that holding is deductible in the form of depreciation of the taxable base for corporation tax for which the company is liable. This measure applies to the acquisition of holdings of at least 5 % in foreign companies which are held continuously for at least one year. Following the receipt of a complaint by a private operator in August 2007, the Commission opened a formal investigation procedure. By Decision 2011/5/EC of 28 October 2009, the Commission declared the scheme at issue to be incompatible