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Project Gaudí: Oaktree Acquires Reduced Portfolio For €260M

25 June 2015 – CoStar Finance

Oaktree Capital Management has finalised the purchase of a reduced non-performing loan portfolio from FMS Wertmanagement (Project Gaudi) paying around €260m in cash, after a back bid sale of a Bilbao shopping centre to Grupo Lar and the removal of two loans prior to transaction close.

According to CoStar News, Grupo Lar, the Spanish developer and investor, has acquired the 1.35m sq ft Megapark Barakaldo shopping centre in Bilbao, in a back to back bid for just over €150 million.

Megapark Barakaldo was previously owned by Resolution Property, who acquired the retail centre for more than €200 million in January 2006, from Arcona Iberia and its joint venture partners, financed by Hypo Real Estate Bank International and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Resolution Property sold Megapark Barakaldo to another investor in 2012, which inherited the encumbered debt.

In addition, FMS Wertmanagement removed two loans from the original €735 million portfolio, contraining 18 NPL loans (Project Gaudi):

1) The first was a loan securing the circa 333,700 sq ft Plaza Éboli shopping centre in Pinto in the south of Madrid. HIG Capital recently acquired Plaza Éboli from Doughty Hanson, the UK private equity firm, for €30m, repaying the loan back to FMS Wertmanagement at par.

2) The second was a combined €125 millioin investment, development and VAT financing facility, granted to Bluespace, formerly known as Blue Self Storage, in July 2007. It was used to fund the acquisition of 17 self-storage properties – in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. FMS Wertmanagement has retained that non-performing loan.

These two removed loans are thought to account for an unpaid loan balance of around €100 million in aggregate. This reduces the original nominal value of Project Gaudi’s NPL portfolio (€735 million) to an unpaid balance of €635 million.

CoStar News understands that Oaktree paid €410m for the slightly slimmer Project Gaudi, reflecting a discount of 35.4%.

Furthermore, the immediate back bid purchase of Megapark Barakaldo by Grupo Lar for circa €150 millions implies the net price that Oaktree paid was €260 million, which was likely paid on an all-cash basis by Oaktree given the final size of the deal.

FMS Wertmanagement closed the sale of Project Gaudi with Oaktree two weeks ago. This was the German bad bank’s maiden NPL portfolio sale in Europe.

CoStar News understands that FMS Wertmanagement is considering two further country-focused loan portfolio sales for the bad bank’s Netherlands and Italian sub and non-performing loans. (…)

Original story: CoStar Finance (by James Wallace)

Edited by: Carmel Drake