Project Traveler: Sabadell Puts A €500M RE Portfolio Up For Sale

14 October 2016 – Voz Pópuli

Banco Sabadell has taken the lead in the Spanish banking sector once again with the sale of its toxic assets. Over the last few days, the Catalan entity has distributed a teaser (information brochure for investors) detailing a new real estate operation: Project Traveler. The portfolio contains 30 hotels, 30 work in progress real estate developments and other debts to SMEs, according to financial sources.

The operation involves collateral worth €500 million and it is already generating a lot of interest amongst international funds.

With this latest deal, Sabadell now has €1,500 million up for sale, given that straight after the summer, it put Project Normandy on the market, through which it wants to sell doubtful debt amounting to €1,000 million. Following the receipt of non-binding offers, that operation has recently entered its final phase, which will last for around a month.

The entity chaired by Josep Oliu has been one of the most active in recent years in terms of selling problem assets. Sabadell wants to reduce the real estate portfolio that it mainly inherited from the acquisitions that it made during the crisis in Spain, such as CAM, Caixa Penedès and Banco Guizpuzcoano, as quickly as possible.

According to the most recently published figures, as at June 2016, the bank held €19,900 million in problem assets, having reduced that balance by €6,000 million over the last two years. Along with portfolio sales, one of the key elements of the bank’s strategy is the work being performed by its real estate arm Solvia. That entity sells homes through the bank’s network and agents, and is responsible for managing overdue debt.

Project Traveler has attracted attention in the market because it is the second portfolio containing hotels to come onto the market in 2016, after Project Sun, being sold by CaixaBank, which is in the very final stages of negotiation.

Other operations

After the short break at the end of July due to the impact of Brexit on the market, the sale of portfolios has resumed once again in recent weeks. The first operation involved Abanca, which sold €300 million in unpaid mortgages to KKR; and then came Sareb’s return to the market – it is offering investors portfolios worth more than €1,000 million, after a year without any operations following the introduction of the Bank of Spain’s accounting circular.

For the large opportunistic funds, such as Cerberus, Blackstone, Apollo, Bain Capital – formerly Sankaty – and TPG, and the large investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, these operations represent one of the best ways of making money in Spain at the moment. (…).

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake