Tag: Banco Mare Nostrum

Goldcar’s Founders Acquire Bankia’s HQ in Alicante

30 November 2018 – Eje Prime

The founders of Goldcar have acquired the headquarters of Bankia in Alicante. The family office owned by the brothers Juan and Pedro Alcaraz, Aligrupo, has been awarded the property that the bank used to own in La Explenada area, and for which numerous offers have been made since it went on the market in October.

The offer received from Aligrupo was the highest of all those received for the building, which will no longer be in the hands of Bankia due to the property divestment process that the entity is carrying out following its merger with Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN), according to Alicante Plaza.

During the month that the building has been up for sale, Bankia has received around thirty visits, which is a good sign of the interest that this operation has sparked in the real estate sector in Alicante.

With this new purchase, the Alcaraz brothers are strengthening their property portfolio, which comprises luxury residential buildings for rent in Madrid. Over the last two years, Aligrupo has acquired two properties in the prime areas of Salamanca and Chamberí for that purpose.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankia Transfers the Management of its Real Estate Portfolio to Haya Real Estate

27 April 2018

The agreement affects properties worth a total of 5.400 billion euros. Haya will handle Bankia’s current portfolio and any new assets that may be added in the future. Cerberus’ real estate manager already manages Liberbank and Cajamar’s real estate holdings.

Bankia has entrusted Haya Real Estate, the Cerberus fund’s real estate management company with full management of its real estate assets, including those from Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN). Both companies signed new agreements for the management of real estate and credit assets and the provision of services to replace those already signed in September 2013.

Likewise, Bankia reported that it had included the management contracts for unpaid debts and certain real estate assets owned by BMN at the time.

Haya Real Estate will handle all of Bankia’s current stock of assets, as well as any new assets that the financial institution may acquire in the future. As reported by the bank, the agreement currently affects a portfolio worth a total of 5.4 billion euros.

Bankia added that this operation would not have an impact on the group’s accounts. With this transaction, the financial institution concludes the reorganisation of its real estate business and unpaid debts ” to increase efficiency after its merger with BMN.”

Currently, Haya also manages a package of 52,000 loans from Sareb and exclusively sells real estate and developer loans to Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar. It also exclusively manages Liberbank’s real estate holdings.

The bank chaired by José Ignacio Goirigolzarri presented its accounts for the first quarter of 2018 this Friday. The bank saw profits fall by 25% due to the absence of extraordinary items and the merger with BMN. Specifically, the company achieved an attributable profit of 229 million euros, compared to €304 million in the same period in 2017.

Agreement With BBVA

In addition to this agreement with Bankia, Cerberus will finalise the purchase of 80% of BBVA’s real estate business next September, for around 4 billion euros, according to the fund’s financial director, Jaime Sáenz de Tejada. In total, Cerberus will acquire some 78,000 real estate assets with a book value of approximately 13 billion euros and the assets and employees necessary for its management.

Original Story: Bolsamanía – Virginia Palomo

Translation: Richard Turner

 

Proinsa: The Final Piece of Reyal Urbis’ Empire Files for Bankruptcy

12 February 2018 – El Confidencial

Proinsa, Promotora Inmobiliaria del Este, has filed for creditor bankruptcy. The company is chaired by Rafael Santamaria, who, together with Joaquín Rivero, Enrique Bañuelos, Luis Portillo and Manuel Jove, were the property “lords” of the last real estate boom. Santamaría was also the President of Reyal Urbis, which starred in the second-largest dissolution ever of a real estate company in 2016, after that of Martinsa Fadesa.

Specifically, Reyal Urbis, which filed for its own creditor bankruptcy last summer, controls 70% of the company Proinsa, which is also dedicated to real estate development. Moreover, the two firms share a registered address on the Madrilenian street of Calle Ayala, just 50m from Paseo de la Castellana, where Rafael Santamaría Trigo, who also used to serve as the President of the Property Developers of Madrid (Asprima), used to have his office.

Last week, Mercantile Court number 1 of Madrid declared that Proinsa had filed for bankruptcy with a debt of almost €62 million and assets worth around €57 million, after it had withdrawn from a refinancing agreement in the middle of December 2016. In fact, that company’s short-term debt amounts to €34 million, of which €10 million corresponds to debt with various financial institutions and €21.5 million to Sareb. On the other hand, it has short-term debt amounting to €21.6 million with group companies. Moreover, at the end of 2016, the firm’s losses amounted to €1.1 million, and it held negative equity of almost €5 million.

In addition to Reyal Urbis, the firm’s minority shareholders include several companies from Burgos that form part of the same group: Inmobiliaria Espolón, Promotora Fuente Redonda, Grupo Río Vena Gestión de Obras and Alqlunia 2.

Proinsa held onto just one asset: a plot of land under development in Los Berrocales, one of the developments in the southeast of Madrid that was blocked by the Town Hall of Madrid fifteen days ago. Specifically, it owned 75% of an estate (La Fortuna) with a fair value of €57.1 million at the end of 2016, according to a valuation performed by Knight Frank. A single syndicated mortgage loan was secured over that estate from Sareb, Banco CEISS, Banco Mare Nostrum, Ibercaja and Unicaja, and with EBN Banco de Negocios acting as the agent bank. That loan was constituted in December 2006 and was subsequently novated on three occasions until the end of 2014. Moreover, in terms of unforeseen costs, Proinsa owed €6.5 million to the Compensation Board of Los Berrocales.

Almost half a century dedicated to real estate

The real estate businesses of the Santamaría family date back to 1970. As Nacho Cardero recounts in his novel “The Property Lords”, Reyal Urbis was constituted in March of that year by the current Chairman’s father, Rafael Santamaría Moreno, owner of the Layer Farm in Pinto, dedicated to the wholesale of eggs. “The laying hens were exchanged for cranes and the company turned the company on its head, changing its name to Reyal, which is Layer written backwards”.

The small construction firm would become one of the largest property developers in the country, after it purchased Urbis from Banesto in July 2006 for €3.3 billion, at the height of the real estate boom (…).

Until last week, Proinsa was the final piece at the base of that real estate emporium. And that final piece in the house of cards left many cards along the way, such as the ghost city of Valdeluz, just 67km from Puerta del Sol, in the province of Guadalajara and another symbol, alongside Seseña (Toledo) (…) of the excesses of the real estate party (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by Elena Sanz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Axactor Buys Its Fifth Debt Portfolio In Spain For €565M

2 August 2016 – Cinco Días

The Norwegian company Axactor is continuing with its commitment to Spain. Yesterday, it announced the purchase of a new debt portfolio in the Spanish market for €565 million, which represents the company’s fifth operation this year. In this way, Axactor is pushing ahead with its growth strategy in Spain and is strengthening its position as one of the main operators in the debt management sector. Juan Manuel Gutiérrez (pictured above right), Head of Axactor in Spain, confirmed that “ we are totally focused on growth: this acquisition forms part of our plans to continue increasing our presence in the Spanish market, through both the purchase of portfolios and the management of debt for third parties”.

The new debt portfolio acquired by Axactor comprises secured and unsecured loans amounting to €565 million. The portfolio includes almost 30,000 accounts held by individuals and small and medium-sized companies. This acquisition comes after the firm closed another deal in July in the primary market, when it purchased a debt portfolio for €144 million from Banco Mare Nostrum.

Since December 2015, the company has tripled the number of cases under management (from 250,000 to 780,000) and it has quadrupled the total volume of debt under management (from €2,140 million to €9,035 million). Spain has become the fastest growing market for the group and is at the centre of its strategy to become the leader of the debt management market in mainland Europe. Its progress was boosted by the acquisition of Geslico, an operation that allowed the Nordic firm to become the second largest operator in this business segment.

In addition, the incorporation of that company into the group has allowed Axactor to cover the entire value chain of the debt business and has facilitated operations involving collections and debt purchases thanks to a complex IT system to which Axactor has obtained access as a result of the integration of Geslico.

Axactor bought the management company of the former savings banks from the opportunistic fund Fortress, following the US firm’s withdrawal from the country. In this way, Axactor began its international expansion several months ago and chose Spain for that purpose. Its strategy involves becoming the leader of the debt management market in mainland Europe. “Spain has become the launch pad for this strategy and a key market for the Norwegian group”, said the firm, which is listed on the stock exchange.

Original story: Cinco Días (by A.G.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sareb Continues To Review Its Asset Transfer Prices

12 March 2015 – Expansión

‘Sareb got married in a rush, without preparing a gift list, and after the ceremony it began to realise what the gift boxes it had come home with actually contained’. Shortly after the creation of the bad bank, one of its senior executives used this metaphor to explain the need to review the assets that the entity had received from the former savings banks.

In order to meet the deadlines set by Brussels for the financial bailout, Bankia, Novagalicia, Catalunya Banc, Banco de Valencia, Banco Gallego, Banco Mare Nostrum, Liberbank, Cajatres and Ceiss transferred a huge volume of properties and developer loans (to Sareb) in a mad rush.

On the basis of valuation reports performed by independent experts, the Bank of Spain set the price that Sareb paid for the assets: €50,781 million in total, in bonds guaranteed by the State. But Sareb reserved the right to review these transfer prices, in an operation known as the “correction of hidden flaws”, to make up for errors in both valuation and scope (perimeter) – assets that did not fall within the perimeter in the end and assets that should not have fallen inside the perimeter – and to make a claim for the difference.

One of the peculiarities of the transfer review mechanism is that the bad bank only allows for corrections in its favour. After reporting the errors detected to the former savings banks and evaluating the claims, Sareb corrects the differences by repaying the bonds it used to pay for them.

To date, the bad bank has already recovered €640 million of the amount it paid to the entities in relation to both valuation and scope (perimeter) errors. The entity most affected to date has been Catalunya Banc, with €318 million (of corrections), followed by Novagalicia (€182 million) and Bankia (€127 million).

But this total amount is expected to rise, because the company chaired by Jaime Echegoyen has reserved its right to review prices for up to 36 months, a period that will expire at the end of 2015 for the entities classified in Group 1 (Bankia, Novagalicia, Catalunya Banc and Banco Valencia) and in February 2016 for the entities in Group 2 (BMN, Liberbank, Ceiss and Cajatres).

Nevertheless, Sareb does not expect to work up until the deadlines in every case. It has already closed an agreement to finalise the review of the price paid for the assets transferred from Novagalicia, Catalunya Banc, Banco de Valencia and Ceiss. Now its investigation will focus on the properties and loans transferred from Bankia, Liberbank, and BMN; it still needs to sign an agreement to finalise the review with Banco Gallego or Cajatres.

Moreover, Sareb reserves the right to review for scope errors until the end of the remaining life of the (corresponding) asset(s), for those assets it paid for but which were never transferred or those that were transferred when they should not have been, such as any consumer loans.

The experts at the asset management company are basing their detailed analysis on the audit that was conducted by a consortium of thirteen companies, coordinated by the law firm Clifford Chance, but they will go into more detail for certain samples.

Original story: Expansión (by Alicia Crespo)

Translation: Carmel Drake