Sareb and Santander sell 540 million Euros in debt from Realia.

Sareb has finalized the most ambitious operation since its creation by the Government: the sale of Realia´s debt. Sources close to the operation, known as “Project Elora”, declare that they  will  transfer  immediately  nearly  440  million  Euros  to  Fortress,  a  fund  that  will collaborate with the managing company Azora Gestión.

Sareb  had  planned  to  sell  a  higher  amount, but  in  the  end  has  decided to  leave  a participated loan out of this operation, which “will be sold at a later stage”, financial sources add. This is a credit for 114 million Euros, half of which is in the hands of Sareb.

The Project Elora is framed within another huge project, known as Bermudas, that includes all the exposure of the company to the listed real estate companies, Metrovacesa and Colonial. The total amount of this portfolio reaches 1200 million Euros, but several sales have already been carried out.

Along with this operation with Realia´s debt, Sareb awarded in August the fund Burlington Loan Management the package of syndicated loans from Grupo Colonial, with a nominal value of  245 million Euros. A bit earlier, in  May, it  had already placed a  credit from Metrovacesa for 35 million Euros. All this in addition to the sale last week of another 323 million Euros to Deutsche Bank. 90 million of these belonged to Bermudas as they were credits from Metrovacesa.

The two funds which will end up with Sareb´s package have been very active all year, especially Fortress. It acquired Lico Leasing, it was interested in the real estate company of Popular and it offered Sareb to enter its capital when it was created. On the other side, Azora  was  created  by  two  former  executives  from  Santander,  Concha  Osácar  and Fernando Gumuzio and its focused in investing in  the real estate sector on behalf of Spanish companies and banks, as well as Spanish and South American great fortunes.

But not only Sareb is taking advantage of the appetite of foreign investors for real estate assets in Spain, Santander has also joined in with the sale of the debt it had in Realia to the U.S. fund King Street Capital Management. Financial sources explain that the nominal value of that debt in the hands of Santander reached 100 million Euros. The bank declined any comments.

Both the debt of Sareb and the one from Santander were included in the loan refinanced by Realia  for  847  million  Euros,  which  was  participated  by  BBVA,  Sabadell,  Barclays, Kutxabank and CaixaBank. In total, the financial debt of the company reached 2166 million Euros at the end of the first half of the year.