Xeresa Golf Completes a €4.7M Capital Increase

12 December 2018 – Alicante Plaza

The company that owns the Villaitana hotel complex in Benidorm, Xeresa Golf, has completed the capital increase that it launched in August, after emerging from creditor bankruptcy by fulfilling the agreement and acquiring the plot on which the resort was constructed, which was initially occupied on a concession basis. Thus, as reflected in the Official Bulletin of the Mercantile Registry (Borme) of Alicante on Tuesday, the company has subscribed a €4.7 million capital increase (the total amount), and so the resulting subscribed share capital amounts to €9.2 million, more than twice the figure before the operation.

It is not the first capital increase that Xeresa Golf has undertaken in its checkered history. In recent years, the firm founded at the time by the entrepreneurial Cremades family from Gandía, has resorted to “accordion operations” to wipe its debt, and to add or expel shareholders (the firm was created with several representatives of the jet set amongst its minority shareholders), and, on the penultimate occasion, to articulate the entry of its current majority shareholder, the hotel management company HI Partners, which owns 80% of its share capital.

Nevertheless, this new increase has basically been covered by its current shareholders (the hotel company owned 80% and the Cremades held onto 20%), according to sources. In fact, the shareholders of Xeresa Golf had preferential subscription rights, which, according to the same sources, they exercised. HI Partners acquired the majority of the company in 2017 (…) by offsetting the loan that the firm owned by the Cremades family held with Banco Sabadell, which was the owner of the hotel management platform at the time (and which was created specifically to manage the hotel assets that the entity had had to assume).

Just a year ago, the bank sold its hotel division to the US fund Blackstone, which is the ultimate owner of the 17 hotels that comprise the portfolio of HI Partners, including the asset in Benidorm (…).

Owner of the plot

This new capital increase comes shortly after Xeresa Golf has become the owner of the plot on which Hotel Villaitana stands (two four- and five-star hotels and several golf courses) in the PEDUI of Terra Mítica. Xeresa Golf submitted the best offer in the auction for the plots convened by the Consell, although in reality only two bids were made and the other one came from HI Partners. In fact, the capital increase was carried out for a similar amount to the price offered by the hotel owner to acquire the land on which it stands: €4.8 million plus taxes.

Similarly, the company that owns the hotel complex managed by the chain Meliá has overcome another milestone in the last year, that of definitively emerging from the creditor bankruptcy that it entered in 2012 (…).

Original story: Alicante Plaza (by David Martínez)

Translation: Carmel Drake