Tag: advisor

Sabadell Sells €9.1bn to Cerberus & €2.5bn to Deutsche Bank

19 July 2018 – Voz Pópuli

Banco Sabadell is selling its property to Cerberus and Deutsche Bank. The Catalan entity has agreed with the US fund to transfer 80% of its foreclosed assets, worth €9.1 billion for €3.9 billion. And is finalising the sale of €2.5 billion in real estate loans proceeding from CAM to Deutsche Bank, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. The entities involved all declined to comment.

The agreement with Cerberus, which this newspaper revealed, includes two of the four large portfolios for sale: “Challenger”, containing assets from the bank – around €5 billion – and “Coliseum”, containing foreclosed assets proceeding from CAM and with public aid from the Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGD).

According to a statement filed with the CNMV, Sabadell values those two portfolios at €9.1 billion and is selling them to a new company for €3.9 billion, equivalent to 42% of the initial appraisal value. Cerberus will own 80% of the new company and Sabadell the remaining 20%, in such a way that the bank will receive around €3.1 billion. The sale requires provisions of €92 million. The Solvia platform was left out of the agreement.

Agreement with Deutsche Bank

Meanwhile, the agreement with Deutsche Bank is for Project Makalu, another of the four portfolios that Sabadell put up for sale. It already sold the first, unsecured, portfolio – Project Galerna – to the fund Axactor.

Of the four portfolios, this is the largest containing loans backed by real estate collateral. And it is protected by the public aid that Sabadell received for the purchase of CAM, at the end of 2011. For that reason, this operation, which may be signed in the next few days, requires the approval of the FGD.

Deutsche Bank has fought off tough competition from Oaktree and Lone Star to acquire this portfolio. The price of the operation could reach between €800 million to €900 million, according to market valuations. The advisor on the sale has been KPMG.

The German bank is one of the typical buyers of these types of portfolio, although until now, it had not purchased anything of this magnitude in Spain. Last year, it closed two operations, one with Sareb amounting to €400 million and the other with CaixaBank amounting to €700 million.

Balance sheet

Following the imminent agreement with Deutsche Bank, the divestment team at Sabadell led by Jaume Oliu and Simon Castellá will have transferred €12.5 billion in problem assets to Cerberus, Deutsche Bank and Axactor.

This latest acquisition by Cerberus is the fourth largest in history in Spain, behind the sale of Popular’s property to Blackstone – €30 billion; the sale of BBVA’s property to Cerberus – €14 billion; and the most recent sale of CaixaBank’s property to Lone Star – €12.8 billion.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Project Sintra: BBVA Engages PwC to Sell €1bn of Toxic Loans

13 March 2018 – Voz Pópuli

BBVA does not want to waste any more time on the real estate clean-up exercise. In the last few days, the entity chaired by Francisco González has launched a €1 billion portfolio on the market: Project Sintra, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. It is being advised in the operation by PwC. Neither the bank nor the consultancy firm wanted to comment.

This portfolio is the penultimate step for BBVA in the reduction of its real estate exposure to zero, after the agreement it reached with Cerberus to transfer €13 billion of foreclosed assets, as this newspaper revealed. That sale, Project Marina, is still pending the necessary authorisations and is scheduled to be closed in the middle of this year.

The balance of BBVA’s divestments is as follows: before Project Marina, the entity had a gross exposure (not including provisions) of almost €16 billion, which will end up at just over €3 billion. Of that figure, two-thirds relate to unpaid loans linked to land and completed developments, with a coverage ratio of 54%.

With this new operation, BBVA wants to be crowned as the first major entity to get rid of its inheritance from the crisis. Last year, Santander closed the sale of €30 billion from Popular to Blackstone, but it still has €11.7 billion left to divest.

The same stars

With Project Sintra, BBVA has now awarded the mandate for three consecutive operations to PwC. It did so with Project Jaipur, worth €600 million, which was acquired by Cerberus; and Project Marina, which had the same advisor and buyer.

The latter operation generated unease amongst certain funds, which complained to the bank because it had not opened a competitive process, but instead chose to negotiate one on one with Cerberus. Sources close to that operation defended that a bilateral sale could optimise both the price and an auction, thanks to the threat of opening the process to more rivals.

In this way, BBVA is one of the entities that has decided to accelerate the sale of portfolios during the first quarter, like Sareb, which is finalising the sale of between three and four packages: Nora, Bidasoa, Dune and Slap, with a combined volume of €3.2 billion.

One of the most fashionable assets and one that entities are increasingly including in their portfolios is land. In this way, Sareb is preparing an operation containing land only and Kutxabank is evaluating a similar process.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Témpore Properties Secures Sufficient Minority Shareholders Ahead of its MAB Debut

23 February 2018 – La Información

The team at Sareb has overcome the penultimate obstacle to enable the Socimi that it has created, Témpore Properties, to take the final step towards starting to trade on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB), as set out in the initial plan drawn up by Jaime Echegoyen (pictured above) almost a year ago. According to sources familiar with the process, Témpore has now successfully completed the incorporation of around twenty minority shareholders into its share capital, as required by the MAB, so that the Socimi can trade on that market.

And this latest milestone is no mean feat. Sources in the sector say that around half a dozen Socimi projects, driven by large fortunes and family offices, have run aground due to their inability or lack of interest in fulfilling that requirement. Specifically, the MAB requires at least €2 million of a company’s share capital (or 25% of the equity if the company has a share capital of less than €8 million) to be owned by around twenty minority shareholders. The managers of the MAB also require that those minority shareholders have no family or business links with the owners of the company and that no single shareholder holds a participation equivalent to more than 5% of the total or worth less than €60,000. The reasons? On the one hand, to emphasise the nature of Socimis as collective investment instruments; but also, to prevent any kind of activity that seeks to use investors as “mariachis”, which is what triggered the inspections against Sicavs back in the day.

Over the last two months, Nicolás Díaz Saldaña, the Director General of Sareb and person responsible for the Témpore Properties project, and his team have maintained permanent contact with investment banks, funds and offices representing large fortunes to search for the most appropriate and most interested profiles to form part of Témpore. That process has also been supported by Ázora, Sareb’s advisor in everything relating to the Socimi’s stock market debut.

Offers to buy Témpore

According to financial sources, investors have welcomed the presentation of the Témpore project with enormous interest, and not only with a view to participating as minority investors. Sareb has received several offers from investment funds and even from other Socimis to acquire Témpore Properties, an investment vehicle in which the so-called bad bank has placed 1,554 of its best rental assets (mainly homes) with an aggregate value of €175 million.

Sareb’s Management has even been seriously considering some of the offers received, according to sources familiar with the contacts, but in the end, it has opted to go with the initial plan and push ahead with the project to have the Socimi debut on the MAB independently, at least to begin with. The next step in this process will be the presentation of the prospectus, which will mark the beginning of the final phase of the stock market debut of Témpore Properties.

The debut of Sareb’s Socimi on the stock market has taken longer than originally planned. Initially, Témpore Properties was expected to make its debut before the end of 2017 and, in fact, in September last year, Sareb formally requested the mandatory authorisations from the MAB and the Ministry of Finance to make its debut in 2017. Nevertheless, the turbulent political panorama and the difficulties that have marked the configuration of the project have delayed the timeframes initially established and now the only objective is for Témpore to make its debut before the end of June 2018.

Original story: La Información (by Bruno Pérez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

 

Christie & Co: There Are Still Plenty of Opportunities for Hoteliers in Spain

22 January 2018 – Press Release

Businesses can look forward to a period of increasing confidence as we head into 2018, according to the latest report by Christie & Co, specialist hotel property adviser in Spain and business property adviser in the United Kingdom. 

In its Business Outlook 2018 report, Christie & Co reviews the most important investment figures in Spain, Europe and the UK, as well as the main hotel indicators for the market in 2017.

According to the data available to Christie & Co, Spanish hoteliers must strengthen their position in the face of the recovery of competing destinations, such as Turkey, Egypt and Greece, which will exert greater pressure on prices and may divert some of the outbound tourism from northern Europe towards other sun and beach destinations.

The report emphasises the increase in investment registered in 2017 in Spain, mostly carried out by investors (51.2%), whose seven largest operations amounted to more than the entire country’s investment figure in 2016. In addition, the proportion of foreign investment represented 56% of total investment and mostly proceeded from the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

Regarding Portugal, the report highlights that only seven deals were known to the market in 2017, involving hotel assets sold individually to hotel operators (MGM Muthu and Hoti Hotels) and investors (Internos). The potential of Portugal in terms of hotel investment is growing, with many investors interested in Porto, Lisbon and the Algarve, mainly due to a remarkable market recovery, which, in the case of Lisbon recorded an increase in occupancy rates and RevPar of 2.8% and 14%, respsectively, during the 9 months to September 2017, with respect to the same period in 2016 (…)

Regarding the UK, where the advisor covers a wider range of sectors, Christie & Co identifies those which benefitted from activity fuelled, in part, by the availability of finance and a surge of investors, many from outside the UK, looking for good opportunities and strong returns.

The continued uncertainty surrounding Brexit has made its impact across all sectors, but the UK has also welcomed a spike in tourism and a surge of foreign capital into the UK market. Asian investors particularly view the UK as an attractive investment opportunity thanks to the country’s stability and relatively low value of the Pound (…).

As a conclusion to the report, Christie & Co believes that the economy is recovering and there are still plenty of growth opportunities, something that they are also embracing, bolstering their teams both in the UK and Europe, to capitalise their expertise to attract and support both new and well-established clients who need help navigating the market, and who want to ensure a high-performing business.

Original story: Press Release

Edited by: Carmel Drake

TH Real Estate Buys Carrefour Logistics Platform In Ribarroja

26 September 2017 – Aedecc.com

Quick Expansión has advised the sale of a logistics platform occupied by Carrefour in Ribarroja (Valencia). TH Real Estate is the purchaser and Carrefour is the tenant of this platform, which has a constructed surface area of more than 55,000 m2.

The asset, which has a constructed surface area of more than 55,000 m2, houses Carrefour’s logistics platform in Levante. In total, the plot has a surface area of 87,000 m2.

The sales process sparked interest from several of the largest funds, Socimis and investors in Spain, whereby demonstrating the quality of the asset, the extent of investors’ appetite and the interest from investors in high-quality real estate assets in good locations.

Original story: Aedecc.com

Translation: Carmel Drake

Royal Metropolitan Buys Bancoval’s HQ In Madrid For c. €20M

25 July 2017 – Expansión

The headquarters of Bancoval in Madrid has a new owner. The fund manager Royal Metropolitan has closed an agreement with Inversis to purchase the building, located at number 20 on the Madrilenian street Calle Fernando El Santo.

The operation has been closed for a price of just over €20 million, which is equivalent to around €7,400/m2, according to market sources.

Last year, Inversis – owner of Grupo Banca March – acquired the subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) – later renamed Bancoval – and inherited this asset.

A year later, the financial institution decided to put the building up for sale to take advantage of the good times in the real estate sector and the interest from investors in assets in the best locations. Savills has participated in the transaction, which has been closed in record time, advising the buyer, and Deloitte has advised the vendor.

The building has a gross leasable area of almost 2,700 m2, distributed over seven floors, as well as two basement floors for parking with more than 700 m2 of additional space. The building, constructed in 1967, was renovated in 1998 and received a special mention from the Town Hall of Madrid in 1999 for the urban planning, architecture and public work awards, within the renovated building category.

This property is located in the Almagro district – one of the most-sought after in Madrid for investors due to the scarcity of prime products there -. The location, its renovation potential and the possibility of using it for offices (for one or more tenants) or for residential purposes, since it has licences for both uses, constitute some of the main advantages of the asset.

Investor interest

The office market is still one of the star segments in the real estate sector. In the first half of the year alone, the volume of investment in the office market in Madrid and Barcelona exceeded €1,100 million. Although the growth in rents is still in its infancy, an improvement is starting to be felt in buildings located in the business district and in the best-located areas, and upwards movements are forecast for the second half of the year.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

MAB Approves Stock Market Debut Of Socimi Numulae

19 July 2017 – TeleCinco

The Alternative Investment Market (MAB)’s Coordination and Incorporations Committee has sent a favourable evaluation report to the MAB’s Board of Directors regarding the Socimi Numulae’s compliance with the joining requirements after it had evaluated all of the documentation submitted.

The company’s debut will require prior approval by the MAB’s Board of Directors. The company’s trading code will be YNUM and its shares will be traded through the price fixing system.

Renta 4 Corporate is the registered advisor and Renta 4 Banco is the liquidity provider.

The company’s Board of Directors has set a reference value of €1.90 for each one of its shares, which represents a total company valuation of €10.4 million. Numulae is a real estate investment company, which aims to provide its investors with returns from rental income and capital appreciation based on the selective acquisition and active management of real estate properties in Spain.

Between 10 and 15 new Socimis will debut in H2

Renta 4 Banco predicts that between 10 and 15 additional Socimis will make their debuts on the MAB between July and December, which means that the entity expects there to be between 45 and 50 companies of this kind trading on the stock market by the end of the year (…).

One of the companies that is expected to make its debut is Sareb’s Socimi, Témpore Properties, which has engaged Renta 4 Banco as its global advisor for its stock market debut, which is scheduled to happen before the end of the year. Currently, only two listed real estate investment companies (Socimis), Merlin and Colonial, trade on the Ibex 35, the most prestigious index in Spain.

Original story: TeleCinco

Translation: Carmel Drake

Aedas Completes €2.3M Capital Increase

17 July 2017 – Eje Prime

Aedas Homes is continuing to raise funds to finance its growth. The company, the heir of Vallehermoso, has carried out a €2.3 million capital increase, which it plans to use to continue to boost its growth and strengthen its position as a key player in the real estate development business in Spain.

According to the Commercial Registry, the company Aedas Homes has carried out a capital increase amounting to €2.3 million. This is the second injection that the company has received in recent months after it increased its capital by €31.5 million in April. In this way, the company’s subscribed capital now amounts to €33.7 million.

Aedas Homes, created by the fund Castlelake and advised by Merlin Properties, was created with the objective of constructing 12,000 homes on land that it has been acquiring since 2013, spanning around 1.35 million m2. In March, Aedas Homes, which competes directly with Neinor Homes, Aelca and Vía Célere, began marketing its first fourteen developments and the group plans to add another fifteen developments to its portfolio in the near future.

The company began life in 2013, where the country’s housing market bottomed out and almost all of its activity was suspended. The fund Castlelake is one of the players who decided to back this business in Spain and in order to carry out its plans, it started to create a portfolio of land in locations that, according to its criteria, would be the first to recover.

At the end of 2015, when the real estate recovery started to become a reality and after investing more than €1,000 million in Spain, the fund had accumulated a portfolio of land covering more than 1.3 million m2, equivalent to 12,000 homes, of which 75% corresponded to primary residences.

It was at this point that the leaders of the project started to think about the possible evolution of all of their assets. To figure it out, they invited the Socimi Merlin Properties to enter the fold, to advise the group on the best formula for operating its land portfolio.

At the company’s helm is David Martínez (pictured above), who has vast experience in the real estate sector. After holding positions of responsibility at groups such as Ferrovial and Bovis Lend Lease in the 1990s, Martínez led projects such as Valdebebas and served as a senior manager at Distrito Castellana Norte.

New hires

In parallel to its growth, Aedas Homes is continuing to beef up its management team. The company recently hired Enrique Gracia, former director of Merlin, as the new Head of Finance. Gracia joined Aedas Homes in May; he has more than fifteen years of experience in the real estate sector (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

C&W, Savills & Colliers Compete To Buy Aguirre Newman

20 April 2017 – El Confidencial

The final round of the sales process for Aguirre Newman has started and three firms are fighting to take home the trophy. The suitors in question are Cushman & Wakefield, Savills and Colliers, the only three players that have submitted bids for the real estate consultancy firm, according to sources in the market.

The winner is expected to be announced in less than a month. Following the first analysis of the proposals submitted, C&W and Savills are the favourites to reach an agreement with Aguirre Newman, to the detriment of Colliers.

As El Confidencial revealed, Aguirre Newman engaged Atlas Capital in February to organise a sales process that could result in a valuation for the company of between €80 million and €100 million, given that the consultancy firm’s turnover amounts to €80 million and its operating profit (EBITDA) stands at €12 million.

Although there was speculation that venture capital funds, such as Cinven and Apax Partners, may be interested in acquiring the real estate consultancy firm, to take advantage of the recovery in the sector, the underlying reasons that caused the company to organise the sales process in the first place rule out a movement of this kind, a priori.

According to the explanation provided by the head of the group to the workforce, the engagement of Atlas forms part of Aguirre Newman’s new Strategic Plan, which seeks to grow in size and importance, at both the domestic and international levels. The idea is that it may be able to handle that leap in magnitude more quickly if it is able to reach some kind of agreement with another firm in the sector.

Aguirre Newman is the only domestic brand of the large companies that operate in the world of real estate consultancy – the market is dominated by multinationals such as CBRE, JLL, Knight Frank, BNP Paribas Real Estate, C&W, Colliers and Savills. The largest eight players account for more than 90% of the turnover in this market in Spain.

With almost 400 professionals, Aguirre Newman stands out due to its good position in the Spanish capital and due to its architecture division, a “rare species” in the sector, which some of the firms that have expressed interest in the sales process have valued as a differential sign when considering the operation,

In addition to the usual work undertaken by these types of firms – advisory, valuations, appraisals, management… – the Spanish firm has tried to pursue new avenues of growth and expansion, like it did in the past with the fund Zaphir and, more recently, with the creation of a specific business unit for the ‘fintech’ world.

Original story: El Confidencial (by R. Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Neinor, Dospuntos & Aedas Invest €5,000M In Homes

26 January 2017 – Cinco Días

The fund Castlelake is backing the same market as the funds Lone Star and Värde Partners by resuming construction of new homes. Between the three of them, the US entities have now invested almost €5,000 million in the sector. The latest player to join the party has created the company Aedas Homes, with a land portfolio worth €1,000 million and the capacity to construct 12,000 homes. (…).

Castlelake has been purchasing land in Spain since 2013, when the property crisis was more acute and few international investors were interested in the real estate sector in Spain. In the end, the fund has created an independent company to construct its homes, into which it has placed 1,350 million m2 of land. 90% of those plots are ready to be built on (with permits) and the firm’s strategy is to continue buying.

For this operation, the fund has been advised by Merlin Properties, which is listed on the Ibex 35. The heads of the fund were looking for a recent real estate success story that did not present any conflict of interest – the Socimi is not involved in the residential sector –and so they asked its directors for help. Moreover, of the 45 people that work for the new company Aedas, seven come from the Socimi, specifically, from the former Testa (acquired by Merlin in 2015), given that they had experience in residential development at the now extinct Vallehermoso.

Castlelake is a firm from Minneapolis that manages €8,600 million in assets around the world. (…).

The new real estate company’s plans

Aedas – the name has Latin roots, stemming from the word to build – will construct homes in seven provinces: Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Málaga and Sevilla. “We are committed to the areas where there is clear residential demand”, said David Martínez Montero (pictured above), Director General at Aedas. Martínez Montero previously led the Operación Chamartín project between 2013 and 2016, the Valdebebas Compensation Board and the Cuatro Torres project in Madrid.

The new company is going to launch 14 developments to construct 1,000 homes, with the aim of finishing them by the end of the year and handing them over between 2018 and 2019. These homes will be located in Madrid (capital, Boadilla and Las Rozas); Barcelona (Hospitalet, Sabadell and Vilanova i la Geltrú); Sevilla (in the capital and in Dos Hermanas); Valencia (capital and Denia); and Estepona (Málaga).

Aedas is not proposing a pre-determined rate of investment or committing to building a specific number of homes per year. “It will depend on how the market absorbs our first 1,000 homes. We are not going to make the same mistakes as in the past”, said Martínez Montero. The company’s strategy involves tackling the primary residential market with urban products for middle class buyers, a segment where demand exists. (…). The directors of the company believe that there is a need for new builds given that hardly any new homes have been built in the last decade.

The arrival of the funds

It is the same theory that the other funds that have burst onto the residential scene are applying. The first was Neinor Homes, owned by the Texan firm Lone Star, with the plan to invest €2,000 million in land and building homes. That company was created from the business purchased from Kutxabank (…).

The next to emerge was Dospuntos, created by Värde Partners, from the ashes of the San José Group’s real estate division, which plans to invest €2,000 million between now and 2021. (…).

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake