Tag: Altamar Capital Partners

Student Properties to Promote a New Hall of Residence in the South of Spain

25 January 2019 – Eje Prime

Student Properties is continuing to grow its portfolio. The company has approved a series of measures at an Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting to undertake the development of a new hall of residence in the south of Spain, according to a statement filed by the company with the Alternative Investment Market (MAB).

The company has approved the incorporation of a property dedicated to student halls, which will be promoted in a town in the south of Spain.

It has also approved to submit “a capital increase through a non-monetary contribution, through which the company will become the sole shareholder of the company that owns the property through the exchange of shares in the company for shares in the company that owns the property” to a future General Shareholders’ Meeting.

The company, which specialises in the acquisition and management of halls of residence for students, is owned by: Altamar Capital Partners, which deals with the global management of alternative assets; Amira Real Estate, which specialises in the management of real estate assets and investments; and Elcano Servicios Patrimoniales, which specialises in the provision of real estate services.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Firmum to Increase Share Capital by €60M to Buy More Parking Lots

3 December 2018 – Eje Prime

Firmum Capital is stepping on the accelerator to increase its portfolio of parking lots in Spain. The Spanish parking lot manager is on the verge of closing a €60 million capital increase to finance new purchases in the domestic market.

Through the financing round, the company will increase its investment capacity to almost €210 million, and will also open up its capital to new shareholders. The firm undertakes its investments through the company APK Gestión de Aparcamientos.

Firmum was created in 2016 by Cristian Abelló, Bernardino Díaz-Andreu and Fernando Pire, who have generated a portfolio comprising 64 parking lots distributed over a dozen Spanish autonomous regions, according to El Economista.

In total, Firmum owns 27,000 parking spaces in the market, which following the financing round, will be increased with more assets in Spain and Portugal. The current investors in the manager include Banco Sabadell, through Sabadell Asset Management, and Altamar Capital Partners.

Last year, the fund invested €80 million in the purchase of 39 assets, which added 15,676 parking spaces to its portfolio. That investment plan comes at a time when these types of alternative assets are booming.

This segment is attracting interest from many funds and institutional investors, who are willing to pay high prices for parking lots in the centre of provincial capitals, tempted by their long-term returns. In Europe, there are around 305 million public parking spaces and 53,650 private multi-storey parking lots, according to a report compiled by Catella.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s First Student Hall Socimi Prepares Its MAB Debut

13 September 2017 – El Confidencial

Student Properties Spain Socimi will be the first listed real estate investment company specialising in student halls of residence to debut on the stock market. And it will do so with an asset that could mark a before and after in this market in the Spanish capital.

It acquired the building at the end of 2016 from the insurance company Mapfre for €13 million. The property is located on Calle Don Ramón de la Cruz, in the heart of the Salamanca neighbourhood, just opposite Nuestra Señora del Pilar school, 200m from the Deusto Business School (the Universidad de Deusto’s business and economics school) and 500m from the IE Business School.

With a total surface area of 5,420 m2, spread over eight floors, of which 3,500 m2 are above ground, the asset used to house one of Mapfre’s private clinics. But its new owner is committed to converting it into a hall of residence for wealthy students. In fact, the property is currently being renovated by the construction company Vialterra Infraestructuras, which was awarded the building contract, with a budget of around €3 million (…) plus indirect costs of €1 million (…).

With those figures on the table, all indications are that the building will end up housing a luxury hall of residence for students, in line with The Lofttown project in Barcelona. The price of rooms is likely to reach €1,800/month. Having said that, all kinds of services will be included: an outdoor gym, a solarium, a co-working room, a private kitchen, weekly cleaning, use of a 3D printer, laundry, a Play Station, a chill-out terrace and a parking area for bikes, amongst other services.

“Projects such as The Lofttown in Barcelona are hard to replicate in many cities in Spain, and above all, they are hard to scale up. That does not mean that they cannot be attractive and even very profitable real estate investments than more standard products, but it does mean that they always have to be marketed and managed by very specialist teams. Moreover, institutional capital will always consider them to be niche products”, says Patricio Palomar, Senior Investment Consultant at AIRE Partners.

Name change and upcoming stock market debut

Don Ramón de la Cruz 37 was acquired by Collie Investment, a joint-stock company that was subsequently transformed into a Socimi. A week ago, that entity changed its corporate name to Student Properties Spain Socimi (…).

The managers behind the company are Altamar Capital Partners, whose President and founding partner is Claudio Aguirre (Goldman Sachs España), Amira Real Estate Asset Management and Orienta Capital, which is chaired by Emilio Soroa, former Director at Seguros Bilbao.

Indeed, one of the directors of Altamar, Miguel Zurita, joined the Socimi just two weeks ago to replace Fabrizio Agrimi, CEO of the firm until 28 August (…).

“In markets such as the USA, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany, student halls have gone from being considered as alternative real estate assets to being products that have as much demand and liquidity as hotels and logistics platforms. To the extent that our market converges towards that trend and becomes more mature, we are going to see products of a different quality appearing, designed for a different type of consumer, in the same way that three-star hotels exist in cities alongside super-luxury hotels”, says Palomar (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by E. Sanz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

KKR & Altamar Join Forces With Elix To Buy Residential Properties

21 July 2017 – Expansión

KKR and Altamar Capital Partners have formed an alliance to invest in the Spanish market where it wants to acquire, renovate and rent out residential buildings. The two funds have joined one of the property developers with the longest history in this sector, Elix, to launch a Socimi that will invest more than €200 million in the purchase of properties in Barcelona and Madrid.

According to sources in the know, yesterday (Thursday) the Socimi Elix Vintage Residencial was constituted, an investment vehicle that is expected to debut on the stock market once it has undertaken the bulk of its investments. This company, which is headquartered in Barcelona, has been created with a share capital of €100 million, most of which has been contributed by KKR and a group of international and domestic investors, including Altamar and Deutsche Finance Group. The other shares are held by Jaime Lacasa (pictured above, right) and Jorge Benjumeda (pictured above, left), founders of Elix.

This capital contribution could be more than doubled when debt is added to the mix. The idea is to buy around 40 buildings in three years, subject them to a comprehensive refurbishment and put them on the rental housing market once the renovation work is complete. The corresponding rental income will feed the Socimi, which plans to rotate its portfolio of assets every three years.

Although Elix Vintage Residencial may debut on the MAB initially, its aspiration is to debut on the main stock market.

Elix will be the company responsible for converting the properties, which is why it has been named as the industrial partner. With this vehicle, the company will be able to successfully scale its business model, which until now had been very concentrated within the El Eixample district of Barcelona. The company, founded in 2003, has managed to convert its brand into a reference in the renovation market in the Catalan capital and last year, it launched activity in Madrid.

“For Elix, this operation represents an important milestone in our development due to the cooperation with some renowned internationally prestigious investors”, explained Lacasa and Benjumeda yesterday. According to the businessmen, the Socimi “will support the growth and institutionalisation process” of the company.

Guillaume Cassou, Head of the Real Estate area at KKR in Europe, has been appointed President of the Socimi. “We are delighted with this new investment in Spain, in a sector that we consider has significant potential and in conjunction with partners with the standing of Altamar and Elix”, said Cassou.

Advice

Altamar Capital Partners, the Spanish independent financial services group chaired by Claudio Aguirre, will be represented by Fernando Olaso, Head of Altamar Real Estate.

The constitution of Elix Vintage Residencial has been advised by Freshfields, RCD, BDO Abogados and CBRE. The investment vehicle will be managed by Elix SCM Partners, a company chaired by Mercedes Grau – formerly a director at Banca March and partner at MdF Family Partners – and will be advised by Lacasa, Benjumeda and the lawyer Adolf Rousaud.

Original story: Expansión (by Sergi Saborit)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Banco Sabadell Launches Fund To Invest In Parking Lots

29 April 2016 – Expansión

Banco Sabadell is exploring new ways of diversifying the investments of its private banking clients in the current low interest environment. The financial entity has just created a private equity fund called Parking Rotation Capital FCR, a vehicle through which it will invest in the purchase of short-stay car parks in Spain and Portugal.

The fund, which has already been registered in the CNMV, will be managed by Sabadell Inversión and is starting life with a committed capital of more than €31 million. This figure has been contributed by the clients of Sabadell Urquijo Banca Privada and by pension funds, says Cirus Andreu, Director of Investments, Products and Analysis at Banco Sabadell.

“We are launching this fund in order to offer better returns to our private banking and institutional clients”, says Andreu. The objective is to reach yields equivalent to those generated by other private equity investments, rather than those currently being generated by fixed income.”We expect to see very low interest rates until 2018, which means that we need to diversify portfolios and invest in liquid positions, with maturity horizons of seven to nine years”, explained the Executive of Sabadell, who hopes to achieve yields of more than 8% through this new vehicle.

The idea is that Parking Rotation Capital FCR will co-invest in the car park sector with two other Spanish funds so as to be in a position to invest in larger operations. Thus, Sabadell has joined forces with the financial services firm Altamar Capital Partners, founded by Claudio Aguirre, and with Firmium Capital, a new investment company, which has created a division specialising in car parks with funds raised from high net worth individuals and institutional investors.

Sabadell, Altamar and Firmium expect to spend €150 million on the acquisition of short-term car parks that are already operating and that have extensive future operational time horizons. They are looking for urban car parks that generate cash flows and recurrent yields.

According to Cirus Andreu, the car park ownership market in Spain is very fragmented, which means there is a great opportunity for a specialist fund to lead the concentration of the sector. During the first phase, it will optimise the commercial and operational management of the parking lots and, over the medium term, it will group together assets into different portfolios for their subsequent sale to wealthy investors.

Experience

Firmum’s partners include the son of Juan Abelló, Cristian Abelló Gamazo – who was a Director at Saba, the leading company in the sector -, Bernardino Díaz-Andreu, who has spent his professional career at Torreal – owner of 20% of Saba -; Estanis Jasinski, who comes from UBS; and Fernando Pire Abarca, who led the car park division at the Isolux Corsan group. The partners of Firmum have been involved in the purchase of 34,000 parking spaces in total.

Meanwhile, in September 2015, Altamar Capital Partners launched Altamar Infraestructure Income FCR, a fund that expects to raise €400 million to invest in infrastructures and “real assets” to combat the volatility of other financial assets and circumvent the low interest rates.

Original story: Expansión (by Sergi Saborit)

Translation: Carmel Drake