Tag: Cementos Portland

FCC To Sell Its Spanish RE Assets Worth €300M+

10 June 2016 – El Economista

FCC owns real estate assets worth €328 million. The company controlled by the Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim is working on the sale of all of its assets located in Spain, which include housing developments, land/estates, garages and other premises. Not in vain, in the last year, FCC has strengthened its team in the real estate division, whereby converting it into a sort of real estate agency. Nevertheless, far from withdrawing from the real estate market, the Spanish multi-national wants to take advantage of the recovery in the sector to combine the construction of homes with their promotion and whereby open a new line of business.

Under the leadership of Xavier Fainé, the former CEO of Cementos Portland, FCC Real Estate is looking to generate value from its real estate assets by proceeding with their orderly sale. The progressive, albeit slow, recovery of the market in Spain and the positive outlook is helping with this task – house sales grew by 9.2% during the first quarter of the year, although the figures are still 56.9% below those registered in 2007 -. Sources at the company indicate that the real estate assets belong to FCC Construcción “and they are administered from there”.

FCC’s most valuable real estate asset is a batch of land plots/estates under development in Tres Cantos, in Madrid, with have a book value of around €120 million. Also in the capital, the company owns the Las Mercedes estate, worth around €120 million. In Barcelona, it owns land in Sant Joan Despí and Badalona, which have a combined value of €64 million. The company also owns several housing developments in Vitoria, Huelva, Pino Montano and Mairena de Aljarafe, the Oporto Industrial Estate in Sevilla, as well as flats, other premises and garages in several cities. According to FCC, the total value of these assets amounts to €328 million. However, clearly the market will dictate the final consideration it receives. (…).

Original story: El Economista (by Javier Mesones)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Realia Appoints Gerardo Kuri As Its New CEO

13 October 2015 – El Mundo

Realia has appointed a new CEO in the form of Gerardo Kuri, one of the real estate company’s directors, as a representative of its majority shareholder, Carlos Slim.

Kuri is also a director of FCC and Cementos Portland, the real estate subsidiary where he is also the CEO. Similarly, he has been performing CEO functions at Inmuebles Carso, the real estate division of businessman Slim’s conglomerate, since 2010.

Realia appointed its new CEO after appointing Julio Rodríguez Torres, also a close advisor of Slim, as the new non-executive Chairman.

Rodríguez Torres and Gerardo Kuri take over from Ignacio Bayón and Íñigo Aldaz, as the Chairman and CEO of Realia, respectively. The former is going to retire and the second recently resigned from the post.

Realia is restructuring its board and governing bodies after Slim took control of the company in June 2015 – he won the takeover war waged during the first half of the year with Hispania, a company in which George Soros holds a stake. After that takeover process, the Mexican businessman secured control of the company, since he added the 25.1% stake that he then acquired in the company to the 36.8% stake already held by FCC.

Realia, whose share prices has risen by 53% on the stock exchange so far this year, owns property covering 419,000 m2, worth around €1,400 million, including the Torres Kio in Madrid. Its residual housing and land business comprises a portfolio of land with a surface area of 1.87 million m2 and a stock of 650 homes.

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sareb May Exchange Its €57.5M Debt In Realia For Shares

20 May 2015 – El Economista

Sareb may have the option to enter the share capital of Realia, with a maximum stake of 4.5%, through the exchange for shares of the equity loans (€57.5 million) that it holds with the real estate company.

Realia will request authorisation at its next shareholders’ meeting to undertake the necessary capital increases in the event that the ‘bad bank’ decides to perform the operation.

It will undertake two capital increases, one amounting to €29 million and a second amounting to €28.9 million. In both cases, it will issue around fourteen million new shares at €2 per share, a price that almost triples (+185%) the current share price of the real estate company.

Shareholder

In this way, Realia will give the ‘bad bank’ another year to exercise its option to become a shareholder of the company. The institution will consider this possibility at a time when Realia is subject to two takeover bids (OPA), one by the Socimi Hispania and the other by the businessman Carlos Slim.

These bidders are waiting for Spain’s National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) to approve the second bid so that the acceptance period may begin.

Sareb’s equity loan in Realia was granted in September 2009, when the real estate company signed a €100 million loan agreement with its two then partners (FCC and Bankia), which each contributed 50% of the balance. FCC then exchanged its entire loan balance for shares in the company, converting it into the majority shareholder, with a stake of 36.8%, which it has already said it will not sell under either of the takeover scenarios.

Meanwhile, Bankia, which currently has an agreement to sell its 24.9% stake in Realia to Carlos Slim, transferred its share of the loan to Sareb in December 2012. The entity has not yet made any decision about the eventual conversion. Nevertheless, the financing is due to expire in 2016.

Of Sareb’s total loan amount, one tranche amounting to €29 million is “freely convertible” in nature, whilst the second tranche, amounting to €28.58 million, is “not freely convertible”, which means that the institution will have to decide between capitalising it or accepting a discount.

Slim’s arrival

Another item on the agenda at Realia’s shareholders’ meeting, which will be held on 22 June, is the ratification of the appointment of Gerardo Kuri as a Director – he is currently the Director General of Real Estate at Carso, one of Slim’s companies, as well as a Director of FCC and the CEO of Cementos Portland.

Slim appointed this spokesman and positioned him on Realia’s board, after he became the primary shareholder of FCC and that group decided to continue as a partner of the real estate company, but just days before the Mexican businessman launched his takeover bid for the company.

Realia will also ask its shareholders for approval, if they deem appropriate, of an increase in its share capital by up to half of its current size and to issue debt securities for a period of up to five years and for a maximum amount of €450 million.

Original story: El Economista

Translation: Carmel Drake