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Blackstone Lends Fidere €543M to Pay a €120M Dividend

23 April 2018 – Eje Prime

Blackstone is going to refinance all of the debt owed by Fidere, its rental home Socimi. The US fund has signed a €543 million loan with an international finance company for its Spanish subsidiary. Thanks to this operation, the company is going to be able to distribute a dividend amounting to €120 million, as reported by the group to the Alternative Investment Market (MAB).

In addition to undertaking the refinancing of this debt, Blackstone is planning to use this new loan to tackle Fidere’s investment plans and to manage the distribution of the group’s reserves. In this sense, the objective of the fund, as the majority shareholder, is to raise funds to pay a mega-dividend.

Currently, Fidere has a financial debt with the fund that owns it of €117 million, in addition to the €270 million that it holds in mortgage loans with several Spanish financial institutions such as BBVA, Sabadell, CaixaBank, Popular and Bankia.

The capital injection that Blackstone has made into its real estate subsidiary has a term of two years, with the option of being extending to five years in the event that certain conditions are fulfilled. The payment of interest has been set quarterly at a rate of Euribor plus 2.5%.

This operation follows others that have been completed in the real estate sector in recent times involving international investment funds and real estate companies. Blackstone itself purchased most of the now extinct Popular’s toxic assets, worth €30 billion, from Banco Santander. BBVA also sold a large portfolio to another fund, Cerberus, whilst, recently, Testa managed to sign a €800 million loan without any mortgage guarantee.

Fidere owns 10,000 residential assets for rent, after starting operations four years ago with 1,860 homes, acquired from the Municipal Housing Company of Madrid (EMVS). Most of the Socimi’s homes are located in Madrid, although the company also owns properties in other cities, most notably, Barcelona.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake