Tag: balance sheet

Reale Seguros Reorganises its Properties to Obtain Higher Returns

15 October 2018 – Expansión

Reale Seguros is reorganising its real estate investments with the aim of achieving higher returns.

The insurance company, the Spanish subsidiary of the Italian firm Reale, has removed from its balance sheet properties with a combined market value of €67 million, which it has transferred to Igarsa, a real estate company belonging to the Reale group, under the formula of a capital increase.

The properties are not linked through provisions to the activity of Reale Seguros. The main asset is located on Vía Augusta in Barcelona and is occupied by Deutsche Bank as the tenant. The package also includes smaller offices, which Reale Seguros could divest.

The assets contributed by the insurance company to Igarsa will join those already owned by that company, with a market value of €80 million, says José Ramón López, Director General of Resources and Media at Reale Seguros. Its main assets are two properties located on Paseo de la Castellana and Paseo de Recoletos in Madrid, which are leased to Condé Nast, the editor of Vogue, and Garrigues, respectively.

The relocation of the real estate assets of Reale Seguros is the starting point for starting to apply an active management of these properties with purchases and sales depending on the opportunities in the market.

The divestments are expected to focus on the smaller offices and in terms of acquisitions, “we are looking at alternatives, although we do not have anything concrete on the table at the moment”, said López.

To move forward with this project, the insurance firm has signed an agreement with the real estate arm of the group in Italy, which has assets under management amounting to €1.5 billion and “which will help us to undertake an industrial management of our portfolio, with the possibility of selling assets to funds as well as looking for opportunities”, said the director of Reale Seguros.

Igarsa, which is headquartered in Madrid, is controlled (95%) by the Italian firm Mutua Reale, whilst the Spanish firm Reale Seguros owns the remaining 5% stake.

The properties linked to the commitments of Reale Seguros remain on the company’s balance sheet. They include its headquarters in Madrid, located on Calle Príncipe de Vergara, a building that was purchased from Sabadell.

Reale recorded premiums of €456 million during the first half of 2018, up by 2.5% compared to the same period in 2017.

Original story: Expansión (by E. del Pozo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Puts another €2.5bn Property Portfolio up for Sale

12 September 2018 – Voz Pópuli

BBVA’s exposure to the real estate sector will have been reduced to almost zero by the end of the year. Following the sale of almost all of its property to Cerberus, the entity chaired by Francisco González has decided to accelerate the divestment of its remaining delinquent loans. To this end, it has entrusted the sale of €2.5 billion in problem loans to Alantra, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

The operation has not been put on the market yet but it is expected to be communicated to opportunistic funds within a matter of days, maybe even this week. The name of the operation is Project Ánfora.

The operation is expected to be completed during the last quarter of the year. In that case, the year-end accounts for 2018, the final set that González will present, will reflect the fact that BBVA will have become the first large Spanish entity to clean up all of its real estate inheritance, with the exception of Bankinter, which barely had any to start with.

The latest official figures, as at June 2018, show that BBVA had real estate exposure amounting to €14.9 billion: €2.5 billion in loans to property developers and €11.5 billion in foreclosed assets, whose transfer to Cerberus will be closed soon.

Sudden push

Another entity that has also accelerated its clean-up process in recent months is Santander, with Project Apple, amounting to €5 billion, whose sale is currently being finalised, also to Cerberus. Afterwards, it will be left with another €5 billion to divest. The exposures of CaixaBank, Sabadell and Bankia are still above that level.

With this sudden push, the banks are seeking to fulfil the mandate established by the ECB and make their businesses in Spain profitable, which have been weighed down over the last decade by the digestion of property.

The sources consulted explain that Project Ánfora includes relatively small loans, such as mortgages and SME credits, which received financing linked to properties.

In addition to Ánfora and Marina – the sale of foreclosed assets to Cerberus – this year, BBVA has also closed the transfer of the Sintra portfolio to the largest Canadian fund, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), containing €1 billion in loans to property developers.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander Considers €3bn Offer from Cerberus for its Toxic Property

6 September 2018 – Voz Pópuli

Banco Santander is on the verge of closing the sale of half of the property that it still has left over from the crisis. The Spanish entity is holding advanced negotiations to transfer €5.1 billion in foreclosed assets to Cerberus, for around €3 billion, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

The fund chaired by John Snow has fought off competition from three other major international investors: Apollo, Lone Star and Blackstone. It is currently the favourite in the running even though it has not submitted the highest bid. According to Debtwire, Cerberus put an offer of €2.7 billion on the table; Apollo offered €2.9 billion but with a less attractive payment plan; and Lone Star and Blackstone bid themselves out of contention.

The offers were presented at the end of August and Santander is expected to close the sale over the next two weeks. Small changes in the perimeter of the operation have not been ruled out.

Resetting the clock

The sale of these assets – known as Project Apple – represents the largest divestment currently underway in the financial sector. It follows other sales completed this year, such as CaixaBank’s sale of €12.8 billion to Lone Star; and Sabadell’s sale of €9.1 billion to Cerberus.

With Project Apple, in which Santander is being advised by Credit Suisse, the bank hopes to reduce its exposure to property in Spain to almost nil.

Following the purchase of Popular last year, Santander ended up with €45 billion on its balance sheet. Last year, it transferred 51% of the €30 billion from Popular to Blackstone – Project Quasar. And, according to figures reported at its results presentation in July, Santander now has €10.1 billion of real estate exposure in Spain. Following the possible sale to Cerberus, it would be left with less than €5 billion, equivalent to just 11% of the balance it held a year ago.

With this operation, Cerberus would consolidate its position as the fund that has purchased the most assets from the banks during the crisis. In the last year alone, it has acquired property from Sabadell and BBVA.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

CaixaBank Will Save €550M Over the Next 3 Years from the Sale of its Real Estate

27 July 2018 – La Vanguardia

CaixaBank estimates that the sale of 80% of its real estate business to the US fund Lone Star will result in a cost saving worth €550 million over the next three years, from 2019 to 2021.

On 28 June 2018, CaixaBank announced that it had reached an agreement with Lone Star to sell it a portfolio of foreclosed assets comprising real estate assets available for sale as at 31 October 2017 and the real estate company Servihabitat, worth around €7 billion in total.

The CEO of CaixaBank, Gonzalo Gortázar (pictured above), highlighted today that the operation, which is expected to be closed at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, will allow the entity to clean up its balance sheet of the foreclosed assets accumulated during the years of the crisis and to improve profitability.

“We have managed to reduce the volume of harmful assets sooner than we had expected, before the new strategic plan comes into effect” for the period 2019-2021 that CaixaBank plans to present in November, according to Gortázar.

The director added that the operation with Lone Star will not generate “a significant result” for CaixaBank, although it will allow it to increase its future profitability, thanks to cost savings of around €550 million over the next three years, given that having real estate assets on its balance sheet has an associated operating cost.

The completion of this sale will result in the deconsolidation of CaixaBank’s real estate business, which will make it “the bank with one of the most healthy balance sheets in the Spanish market”, he said.

Original story: La Vanguardia

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sabadell Sacrifices Profits to Clean Up its Balance Sheet & Resolve the TSB Crisis

27 July 2018 – Expansión

Banco Sabadell has decided to sacrifice all of the profit that it obtained in the last quarter to clean up its balance sheet and leave behind the impact of the sale of its real estate portfolios and the complex IT integration of TSB.

The entity chaired by Josep Oliu earned €120.6 million during the first half of the year, a figure that represents a decrease of 67.2% with respect to the same period last year (€317.7 million) as a result of having recognised impairments amounting to €806 million. Nevertheless, if we ignore those extraordinary effects, the bank’s recurring net profit grew by 24.4% to €456.8 million.

The entity decided to take a hit on the income statement for the second quarter with a provision amounting to €177 million resulting from the macro sale operation of a real estate portfolio worth €12.2 billion and which was formalised in July, in other words, in the third quarter. In parallel, it decided to recognise a provision amounting to €92.4 million to deal with future compensation payments to customers of its British subsidiary, TSB, who were affected by problems caused by the connection of a new IT platform developed by Sabadell.

With this measure, the bank wants to shelve the technological crisis that it suffered in the United Kingdom and also leave its balance sheet almost completely free of the toxic assets that it accumulated during the economic crisis. Specifically, during the first six months of 2018, Sabadell decreased its problem assets by €7.012 billion, and by €9.547 billion during the last twelve months. Now, the problem balance amounts to €7.911 billion, of which €6.669 billion are doubtful debts of all kind (not only real estate) and €1.242 billion are foreclosed properties. Thus, the ratio of net problem assets over total assets amounts to 1.7%. The default ratio following the portfolio sales amounts to 4.5%.

As at 30 June 2018, the bank’s fully loaded CET1 capital ratio amounted to 11%, although that will rise to 11.2% following the transfer of the majority of the toxic assets, closed in July.

The bank led by Jaime Guardiola has sold the bulk of its non-performing and foreclosed loans to Cerberus, with whom it is going to create a joint venture in which the fund will hold an 80% stake. The entity has also sold portfolios to Deutsche Bank and to Carval Investors. Solvia has not been included in any of those transactions and will continue to be fully owned by Sabadell.

Between January and June, Sabadell increased the volume of its live loan book by 3.7% thanks to a boost from SMEs and mortgages to individuals in Spain. Customer funds increased by 2.8% YoY driven by demand deposit accounts, which amounted to €105.4 billion. Off-balance sheet funds also grew, by 1.2%, during the quarter, primarily due to investment funds.

During the first half of the year, Sabadell’s interest margin remained stable, given that the entity earned practically the same amount as it did in the six months to June 2017 (€1.81 billion). The bank has been affected by exchange differences and a reduction in results from financial operations (-51%); by contrast, fee income grew by 6%. Thus, the gross margin fell by 8.8% to €2.631 billion.

The reaction of investors to these results has been negative. Sabadell’s share price fell by 2.99%, the third largest drop on the Ibex, to €1.37. So far this year, the bank’s share price has depreciated by more than 14%.

Original story: Expansión (by Sergi Saborit)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Project Orion: CaixaBank Launches the Sale of Another €600M in Doubtful Loans

23 July 2018 – Voz Pópuli

CaixaBank’s divestment machine is not shutting down, even for a second. The entity led by Gonzalo Gortázar has just closed the largest real estate sale in its history, a €12.8 billion portfolio, which it has sold to the fund Lone Star, and it has already launched another new operation.

The latest deal is Project Orion, through which CaixaBank wants to transfer a €600 million portfolio of problem loans to opportunistic funds, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. Unlike on other occasions, the portfolio does not comprise loans to property developers but rather credits to small- and medium-sized entities (SMEs). The loans are secured by real estate collateral, be it property purchased by the delinquent SMEs or other property offered as collateral when asking for a loan for business activity.

Project Orion was launched a few weeks ago and is expected to be closed after the summer. Currently, interested parties are immersed in the non-binding offer phase.

From flats to loans

The former Caixa is placing this portfolio on the market to reduce its volume of doubtful assets, having eliminated its foreclosed assets from its balance sheet. The entity agreed with Lone Star the sale of €12.8 billion in flats, land and developments for €6.7 billion.

On Friday, CaixaBank presents its results for the first half of the year, which will show the first snapshot of the entity following the agreement with Lone Star.

In addition to that agreement, the entity sold a portfolio of €650 million in problem loans to Cerberus, as part of Project Ágora.

Following those operations, CaixaBank is left with €3 billion in rental homes and €13 billion in doubtful loans on its balance sheet, in net terms.

The market expects the entity to make another major divestment of doubtful loans over the coming months, by selling an even larger portfolio than Project Orion. With that, the Catalan entity would be in a strong position to launch its new strategic plan, which it will announce at the end of the year.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander to Reduce its Toxic Assets to Zero by September

17 July 2018 – El Economista

Banco Santander is on the verge of saying goodbye to the great burden left behind after the crisis: the delinquent loans and properties. The entity is preparing for the sale this summer of a portfolio of toxic assets worth between €5 billion and €6 billion, which would leave its balance sheet virtually clean of property. The bank headed by Ana Botín is planning to close the operation, which is already underway, before the start of September, according to market sources.

In this way, the entity would manage to get rid of almost all of its leftover real estate in just one year. After acquiring Banco Popular, the bank saw its non-performing assets increase by €41.1 billion. Nevertheless, it found a quick exit after putting the portfolio containing all of Popular’s properties, worth €30 billion gross, on the market.

In August, Santander closed that operation after transferring half of the assets to Blackstone, for a net value of €5.1 billion. The operation saw the two entities, the bank and the fund, create a joint venture to which all of the property was transferred and in which Blackstone holds a 51% stake and the bank the remaining 49% share.

The management of the assets is now in the hands of the fund. The company, which was constituted in the spring of this year, is called Quasar Investment, and also holds the assets that used to be held by Aliseda, the servicer of Popular. Now, the bank is looking to get rid of this final portfolio almost exactly a year later.

At the end of March this year, the last date for which data is available, the bank had a real estate exposure in Spain of around €10 billion, of which 50% was provisioned. The bank already announced at its most recent results presentation that its aim was to leave its balance sheet practically free of those assets during the course of this year.

For the time being, the funds potentially interested in the portfolio include Cerberus, Lone Star and Blackstone. Specifically, those three funds have starred in the largest portfolio purchases from banks in the last year.

In November, BBVA announced the sale of 80% of its property to the fund Cerberus. The entity transferred a portfolio comprising around 78,000 real estate assets with a gross value of €13 billion for a price of €4 billion. In this way, the bank positioned itself as the Spanish entity with the fewest toxic assets on its balance sheet with an exposure of €4.775 billion, accounting for just 1.5% of its total assets in Spain.

CaixaBank has been one of the last entities to announce a major operation. That bank closed the sale of 80% of its real estate on 28 June to the fund Lone Star and it transferred it 100% of its servicer Servihabitat. The gross value of the real estate assets amounted to €12.8 billion, and the net book value was around €6.7 billion. Once CaixaBank has completed the repurchase of 51% of Servihabitat (an operation that was announced on 8 June and whose execution is pending authorisation from Spain’s National Securities and Exchange Commission), the entity will transfer the real estate business to a joint company with Lone Star, in which it will retain a 20% stake.

S&P determined in a report published last Thursday that the Spanish banks are going to struggle to fully clean up their balance sheets of toxic assets despite the accelerated rate of operations that are being carried out. Analysts recognise that, although the entities are increasingly close to putting an end to their delinquency problem, it is going to be hard to completely clear the ground due to the poor quality of the remaining assets.

Original story: El Economista (by Eva Díaz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA & Sabadell Finalise Negotiations with the FGD to Sell their ‘Protected’ Toxic Assets

17 July 2018 – Expansión

The two banks are looking to remove their remaining damaged assets from their balance sheets. Sources in the sector calculate that the FGD will have to assume a cost of around €3.5 billion.

The Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGD) and BBVA and Sabadell are on the verge of reaching a definitive agreement that will allow the two banks to sell the majority of their damaged real estate assets that are protected by the FGD in order to clean up their balance sheets.

The fund will know exactly what the cost of the protection is and, in exchange, the banks will assume a greater percentage of the potential losses. Calculations from experts in the sector indicate that the cost that the FGD will have to bear amounts to around €3.5 billion.

The negotiations that have been going on for months between the heads of the FGD, led by Javier Alonso as the Chairman and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain, and BBVA and Sabadell, as well as the Ministry of Finance and the other financial institutions, are on the verge of reaching an agreement that will enable the two banks to get rid of the majority of their damaged real estate assets in operations similar to the ones undertaken by both Santander with Popular’s assets and more recently by CaixaBank.

The formula is the same: the two banks group together in a new company, or several new companies, the damaged assets and they sell the majority of the share capital in those companies to an investment fund, holding onto a minority stake that typically amounts to between 10% and 20%. In this way, the banks deconsolidate their real estate positions and their balance sheets look clean.

The problem that BBVA and Sabadell have had is that a large part of their assets to be sold are protected by a guarantee until 2021 whereby the FGD committed to bear the cost of 80% of any losses incurred, on the book value of those assets, when they were sold. This has been the case for the last few years (Sabadell has already sent three annual invoices to the FGD for losses over the last three years and BBVA has done the same for the last two years). And so that will continue until the end of the guarantee period.

Original story: Expansión (by Salvador Arancibia)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander Puts €6bn in Real Estate Assets Up For Sale

30 June 2018 – Cinco Días

Spain’s banks have put their foot down on the accelerator to end the property hangover once and for all. And there is no letup. On Thursday, CaixaBank announced that it had reached an agreement with Lone Star to sell it 80% of its problem assets, including its real estate platform Servihabitat, worth €7 billion altogether, which means that the fund will disburse around €5.6 billion for the property of the Catalan entity (based on the valuation as at October 2017).

This operation caused CaixaBank’s share price to soar on Friday, rising by almost 7%, and closing trading with an increase of 3.32%, to reach a value of €3.706 per share.

Sabadell also saw its share price soar on the stock market after closing the sale of a portfolio of non-performing loans worth €900 million to the Norwegian fund Axactor. That was Project Galerna, the smallest portfolio of the four containing foreclosed assets and non-performing loans that the bank has put up for sale, and whose deadline for the presentation of binding offers ended last Wednesday.

The bank’s objective is to close the sale of the four portfolios in a competitive process with a value of €10.8 billion over the next two weeks, before it presents its results for the first half of the year. Despite that, the Catalan bank will not be able to deconsolidate from its balance sheet more than €5 billion, equivalent to the largest portfolio comprising problem assets proceeding from the bank itself.

The other portfolios, whose contents came from CAM, cannot be removed from its balance sheet until the Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGD) reaches an agreement with the banks and Brussels so that the losses that these sales generate are not included in the public deficit. The stumbling block with these portfolios is that they are backed by an Asset Protection Scheme (EPA), in which the FGD initially assumes 80% of the losses generated by the operation, and Sabadell the remaining 20%, although the channel being considered to resolve this problem leaves those percentages to one side.

The market, on the news of the sale of the Galerna portfolio and the existence of seven offers in total for the purchase of almost all of the entity’s property, reacted with a rise of 4.7%. Although by close of trading the increase had dropped to just 1.74%, the third largest of the selective, to finish with a share price of €1.4355.

Santander has joined these operations, by placing up for sale foreclosed assets worth €6 billion, almost all of the property still held by Santander España. A spokesperson for the bank declined to comment on the operation.

The advisor on the sell-side is Crédit Suisse.

This macro-sale is the second largest operation that the group chaired by Ana Botín (pictured above) has ever undertaken and could be its last, given that this final disposal will allow the group to get rid of almost all of its real estate.

Indeed, Santander starred in the first macro-operation involving the sale of real estate assets one year ago. Last summer, it surprised the market with the sale in a single operation of all of the property proceeding from Banco Popular, around €30 billion, to Blackstone, with whom it created a company in which the US fund holds a 51% stake and the bank chaired by Ana Botín owns the remaining 49%.

That operation put pressure on the rest of the sector, which started to replicate the formula. The second to repeat the formula, in fact, was BBVA, with the sale of €13 billion to Cerberus.

Sareb is also now sounding out the market regarding the sale of gross assets worth around €30 billion (around €13 billion net). Nevertheless, the bad bank must wait for the green light from the Government to be able to carry out that operation, given that Sareb is an institution that depends on the Executive. It was created to unblock the former savings banks that received aid for their property, which is why it will try to maximise the value of any operation that is undertaken in order to return the public aid.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Ángeles Gonzalo Alconada)

Translation: Carmel Drake

CaixaBank Transfers Servihabitat & €6.7bn in Toxic Assets to New JV with Lone Star

28 June 2018 – El Confidencial

Caixabank has followed in the footsteps of Santander and BBVA, as expected, to create a joint venture company with a large international fund to which it is going to transfer a large proportion of its toxic real estate assets.

Specifically, the entity has reached an agreement with Lone Star to transfer to this new jointly-owned vehicle its entire portfolio of foreclosed assets, whose gross value amounts to €12.8 billion, and which in net terms is worth €6.7 billion, as well as the servicer Servihabitat, whose ownership it recovered on 8 June, when it acquired the 51% stake that it had sold to TPG five years ago, and which takes the final amount of the agreement to €7 billion.

Lone Star will own 80% of the share capital of the new company, whilst the financial institution will control the remaining 20%, a structure that will allow CaixaBank to deconsolidate the assets. The deal is expected to have a neutral impact on the bank’s income statement, but will allow it to improve its capital ratio, the ultimate motivation behind these kinds of operations.

Specifically, the agreement with Lone Star will allow the bank to increase its fully loaded CET 1 ratio by 30 basis points, but, given that the purchase of Servihabitat resulted in a hit of 15 points, the net outcome of these two operations will have a final impact of a 15-point improvement.

Pressure from the European Central Bank on Spanish entities to accelerate the real estate clean up have been the trigger for these kinds of operations, since they allow the immediate deconsolidation of million-euro batches of toxic assets, which will be sold gradually through the joint ventures that are being created with the funds, whereby avoiding the need for the entities to recognise greater losses now.

Gonzalo Gortázar (pictured above), CEO of CaixaBank, highlighted that this “operation allows us to fast forward by a couple of years with our strategic objectives of reducing non-performing assets, allowing CaixaBank to position itself as one of the banks with the most healthy balance sheets in the Spanish market”.

The agreement also stipulates that Servihabitat will continue to render services to the bank for five years and the final signing of the agreement with Lone Star still depends on approval from the CNMC – Spain’s National Competition and Markets Commission – for the repurchase of 51% of the servicer, at which point the financial institution will be able to sell the assets onto the new joint company.

For its 80% stake (equivalent to around €5.6 billion based on current numbers), the fund will pay the valuation that the assets have at the time the transfer is definitively closed, which is still pending the corresponding authorisations, in both Spain and Europe, which means that the parties will have to wait until the end of this year or the first quarter of 2019.

CaixaBank expects to achieve cost savings of €550 million before taxes over the next three years, an improvement that also includes the new servicing contract that will be signed with Servihabitat.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake