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Grupo Villar Mir Sells Final 1.51% Stake In Colonial

10 July 2017 – El Mundo

Grupo Villar Mir has definitively exited the share capital of the real estate company Colonial by selling the 1.51% stake that it still owned in the Socimi. The shareholding that has been sold is worth around €40 million on the basis of current market prices.

The corporation owned by Juan Miguel Villar Mir has thereby brought to an end its phase as a shareholder of the real estate company, which began in January 2014 – at its height, the Group was the largest shareholder, with a 24% stake. Villar Mir first invested in the real estate company Colonial when that firm was in the middle of its restructuring and clean up process, and it has exited it days after the firm returned to the Ibex 35 and became a Socimi.

Specifically, the corporation has sold the 5.42 million shares that it still owned directly in the real estate firm, through Espacio Activos Financieros, a package equivalent to a 1.51% stake of its share capital, according to the registers of Spain’s National Securities and Exchange Commission (CNMV).

Grupo Villar Mir also owned another 3.21% of Colonial indirectly, through various financial instruments. Those shares have been “loaned to hedge a financial operation”, according to the supervisor’s register.

In this way, the corporation concludes just over three years as a shareholder of Colonial, after leaving the Board of Directors in December 2016, when it decreased its stake in the company to just 3.3%.

Subsequently, in January 2017, it decreased its percentage to 1.5%, which is the stake that it is now selling.

Finaccess, current largest shareholder

Currently, the Mexican group Finaccess is the largest shareholder of Colonial; following its recent share purchase, it now owns 13.76% of the share capital. The Qatar sovereign fund is the second largest shareholder of the company chaired by Juan José Brugera, with a stake of 11.7%. The next largest shareholders are the Colombian firm Santo Domingo (6.1%) and the Puig family, which recently acquired a 5.10% stake.

On 19 June 2017, Colonial returned to the Madrid Stock Exchange’s Ibex 35, nine years after leaving the exclusive group. The firm owns a portfolio of office buildings for rent in the centre of Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, with a combined surface area of 866,000 m2 and a value of around €8,000 million.

With its return to the Ibex, Colonial completed the restructuring and clean-up process that it began in 2015. After that, it undertook a growth strategy through which it has now made investments amounting to €1,760 million through various operations, ranging from the purchase of assets to increasing its stake in its French subsidiary Société Foncière Lyonnaise (SFL), and acquiring capital in another Socimi, Axiare.

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake