JP Morgan Negotiates €2bn Loan with Owner of Santander’s HQ

22 February 2018 – Voz Pópuli

There’s a new player in the complicated game of chess involving the bankruptcy and liquidation of the owner of Banco Santander’s headquarters, the Ciudad Financiera, in Madrid. One of the largest investment banks in the world, JP Morgan, is negotiating a €2 billion loan to unblock the bankruptcy proceedings, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. JP Morgan declined to comment about the rumours in the market. Market sources indicate that the loan has not been granted yet.

In this way, the US entity would support one of the shareholders, the company Edgeworth Capital, owned by the Iranian businessman Robert Tchenguiz. That banker is trying to get Marme Inversiones 2007, the company that owns the office complex, to emerge from bankruptcy without having to file for liquidation. To this end, it has asked Mercantile Court number 9 in Madrid to give it the green light to negotiate an early termination for payments with the creditors.

That is where JPMorgan comes in. Tchenguiz has managed to convince the entity to consider financing almost €2 billion, which would have to be used to repay all of the creditors, including several banks such as CaixaBank, ING, RBS and Santander itself, as well as funds such as GSO (owned by Blackstone), Canyon, Burlington, Värde Partners, Centerbridge and Monarch.

Many of these creditors, above all the funds that purchased debt at a discount, agree with Tchenguiz. But not the other shareholder, the British magnate Glenn Maud, who is preparing to make a rival offer, or Santander, which is leaning towards the proposal put forward by the Arab fund AGC.

Status of proceedings

After years of bankruptcy and hundreds of resources, the situation is closer than ever to being unblocked. In fact, the court has already given the green light to the liquidation plan for Marme Inversiones 2007. The problem is that two other parent companies, Delma and Ramblas, are still immersed in bankruptcy proceedings. A resolution is expected before the summer.

Unless there is a new legal war, all indications are that the financial situation of the owner of the Ciudad Financiera will be resolved this year.

Along with the proposal from Tchenguiz, the fund AGC and the consortium Madison-Maud-GCA are studying putting between €2.7 billion and €2.8 billion on the table for Santander’s headquarters, within the liquidation process.

Together with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs is also positioning itself in this operation. It has been advising Santander for months on the solution that may be found to resolve the situation of its headquarters.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Property Developers Start Buying Land Without Building Permits

11 October 2017 – Real Estate Press

Overseas real estate funds, with a major presence in the Spanish real estate market, are owners of large portfolios of land as well as of debt secured by land as collateral, and many are operating in association with Spanish property developers.

The estimates for this year indicate that 80,000 new homes will be built in total.

The funds Blackstone, Cerberus, Kennedy Wilson, TPG, Värde Partners and Apollo started to acquire servicers, created by the banks, when the real estate sector began to recover. Other funds, such as Lone Star, Centerbridge, HMC, Eurostone, Aquila, Oaktree, Castlelake, Värde and Pimco, have been backing residential development. In this way, they have become the new residential property developers that need land as their raw material.

Now, unlike in prior years, no one wants to risk buying land that still needs some kind of building permit approval to turn it into buildable land, due to the risks involved, and that is why the price of buildable land is rising.

Funds were able to acquire land in areas with high demand for housing, such as Madrid, País Vasco, Barcelona, the Costa del Sol and the Alicante coast, at low prices before residential activity started to recover. But over the last year, land prices have also been recovering in other large capital cities, such as Valencia, Zaragoza, Sevilla and Málaga.

Nevertheless, the potential that these entities see in the residential development segment has allowed them to reduce the urban planning risk in more mature markets, such as Madrid and Barcelona, until now, and start to place their focus on plots that still have not received building permit approval. Moreover, there is no shortage of people who are demanding that the administrations adopt their expansive urban planning policies once again.

Original story: Real Estate Press

Translation: Carmel Drake

Large Funds Thrash It Out To Buy Residential Land

9 October 2017 – El Periodico

The 10 largest property developers in the country are in a position to start work on the construction of around 20,000 new homes in 2018. That volume of output is possible thanks to the collection of buildable urban land that they have managed to accumulate over the last year. The large Spanish property developers – many of which are owned, at least in part, by investment funds – as well as overseas funds themselves, are competing, at an almost frenetic pace, to acquire plots of land on which they will be able to build without modifying the classification (to residential use).

“Overseas investors are very present in the new Spanish real estate landscape, be it as owners, debt holders, servicers or property developers investing together with other local property developers, both in the renovation of existing buildings and the construction of new ones, as well as in the rental sector and through the constitution of Socimis”, says Samuel Población, Director of Residential and Land at the real estate consultancy firm CBRE. The consultancy indicates that at the end of 2016, the large property developers in Spain owned €8,000 million in assets for construction.

80,000 homes in 2017

The real estate sector is expecting the output of new homes to reach 80,000 units in 2017. That figure is still below the short-term goals. “We should be producing 150,000 homes (per year), although we will not achieve pace that for another three years”, says Juan Velayos, CEO at Neinor Homes, one of the real estate companies – whose main shareholders are investment funds – that has purchased the most land over the last two years. “We set ourselves a land investment target of €380 million for 2017 and 2018, but we have already covered most of that budget this year”, he adds. His firm is currently working on the construction of 5,000 homes in Spain and hopes to achieve a completion rate of 3,500 units per year.

The funds Blackstone, Cerberus, Kennedy Wilson, TPG, Värde Partners and Apollo started to acquired the commercial and management platforms that the banks had created (the servicers) when the real estate sector started to recover in 2013. In parallel, the overseas funds Lone Star, Centerbridge, HMC, Eurostone, Aquila, Oaktree, Castlelake, Värde and Pimco are strongly backing residential development. In this way, they have become the new house builders. And they cannot build if they don’t own land.

The problem is that, for various reasons, the administrations are not producing raw material. “No reclassifications (of land) are being performed, because someone will always get hurt”, says Lluis Marsà, President of the Association of Property Developers and Constructors (APCE). “We do not take the risk of buying non-buildable land that has to be transformed because the production costs are rising, the risk soars”, says Velayos.

Nevertheless, that situation has the benefit that agents in the sector are adjusting output to the maximum in order to maintain returns despite the new quality standards for homes, which are higher than in the past. “One of the positive effects of the profound transformation of the sector, with the arrival of new players, is the greater degree of control over the finances and execution periods that we are seeing”, says Población.

Investors adding value

The profile of funds has evolved quickly from opportunistic to value added (…). The focus of these firms is to acquire plots in areas where demand for housing is high, such as Madrid, País Vasco, Barcelona, the Costa del Sol and the Alicante coast. But during 2017, there has also been a positive recovery in land operations in other large capitals such as Valencia, Zaragoza, Sevilla and Málaga (…).

Original story: El Periodico (by Max Jiménez Botías)

Translation: Carmel Drake

The Banks Want To Regain Control Of Their RE Servicers

14 October 2016 – El Confidencial

Just three years after selling the management of their real estate companies to large international funds, Spain’s large banks are engaged in a widespread movement to try to regain control of those companies once again and as such, achieve absolute freedom to sell their properties by other means.

The reason? There are basically two motives. On the one hand, the banks consider that more profitable options exist to allow them to divest property without penalising their capital; and on the other hand, they want to save the management commissions that they are having to pay the funds for taking over the reins of these real estate companies, known in the jargon of the sector as “servicers”, and whose fees rise in line with the volume of assets managed.

Looking back…in December 2012, Banesto agreed the sale of Aktua to Centerbridge; in September 2013, Caixabank sold 51% of Servihabitat to TPG and Bankia sold 100% of its real estate company to Cerberus; two months later, Santander reached an agreement with Apollo to sell 85% of Altamira and Popular sold Värde and Kennedy Wilson 51% of Aliseda. Sabadell and BBVA, the other two large Spanish banks, chose to continue to manage their assets internally; the first through Solvia and the second through Anida.

Nevertheless, the majority of these marriages of convenience have been suffering from serious tensions for a while now; and these differences of opinion are causing the banks to begin to try to regain control of their real estate companies. According to El Confidencial, Popular is trying to reach an agreement with Värde to repurchase Aliseda and transfer its assets to the so-called “Proyect Sunrise”, a kind of bad bank through which it seeks to divest up to €6,000 million.

Santander has also been engaged in negotiations for severals months with Apollo, from which it already snatched a series of assets from the former real estate fund Banif to transfer them to Metrovacesa, the real estate company that has just finished merging its properties (not its land) with Merlin. In fact, that operation is an example of the type of project that the sector is now committed to, and which has caused all kinds of rumours to circulate about potential alliances.

For example, the entity chaired by Ana Patricia Botín and BBVA have found another way of getting rid of almost 7,000 homes (between the two of them) in the form of Testa, the rental housing subsidiary owned by Merlin. The two banks are deconsolidating all of the real estate assets that they are transferring to both Merlin and Testa, because they hold minority stakes, and this allows them to generate liquidity because the former is a listed company and the latter will be listed on the MAB from next year and on the main stock exchange within five years.

In the case of Servihabitat, Caixabank will be able to start to seriously consider a movement of this kind from next year, given that for the first four years (of the ten-year duration of their alliance), TPG has a special grace period, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

The case of Bankia is special, because the bulk of its assets were transferred to Sareb and it accounts for the real turnover of Haya Real Estate, the “servicer” created by Cerberus, given that the company was created with €12,200 million of the entity’s real estate assets and with €36,000 million from Sareb. Moreover, the fund acquired the companies Reser Subastas and Gesnova from Bankia.

Last year, Gesnova lost the entire portfolio of contracts that it held with the former real estate fund of Bankia, which was sold to Goldman Sachs, a blow that was compounded by Sareb’s decision to award Solvia the management of the portfolio of foreclosed assets that until then had been managed by Gesnova. In total, Haya saw a quarter of its revenues go up in smoke.

“All of the banks are looking at how to regain control of their servicers because they are realising that better alternatives exist, above all following the Metrovacesa operation, and in light of the fact that the real estate market is recovering”, said one source. “Everyone is talking to everyone else, lots of potential alternatives are being presented, which may or may not materialise, but the reality is that there is going to be a lot of movement in the world of the servicers over the next two years” said one executive from the sector.

Meanwhile, the funds are willing to withdraw from their investments provided the entities are willing to stump up the cash. In the case of Apollo, the figure is likely to exceed €1,000 million and in the case of Värde €800 million, according to sources. (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by R. Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone Creates Europe’s First Restructured Loan Securitisation Fund

4 October 2016 – Expansión

The US giant Blackstone is doing great business in Spain with the problem assets that it bought from Catalunya Banc at the beginning of 2015. And it is now going to set the cat amongst the pigeons with an operation that looks set to represent a golden solution for its competitors and Spain’s banks in general.

The firm has just created the first securitisation fund in Europe from restructured loans. It is a pilot test, involving €265 million of credits, but it will likely open the way for other Spanish entities to dispose of the majority of their problematic loans without having to sell them to vulture funds at knockdown prices.

Blackstone completed the purchase of Catalunya Banc’s problematic mortgage portfolio for almost €3,600 million in April 2015 – the portfolio had a nominal value of more than €6,000 million – that sale was a condition for BBVA to acquire the Catalan group. The purchase was structured through a fund to which Blackstone contributed €3,598.4 million and the FROB the remaining €524.9 million.

The well trodden path

Now Blackstone, which has spent almost a year “negotiating” with the CNMV to obtain approval for this operation’s prospectus, is selling these mortgages to qualifying investors through a traditional securitisation fund, like the ones created in Spain to finance the credit boom until the outbreak of the financial crisis, but with the difference, given that this time the fund involves restructured loans. In other words, it contains credits whose conditions have been altered to allow the borrowers to afford the repayments.

Financial sources explain that, rather than discounts of 70%, such as those being applied to the direct sale of portfolios through bilateral contracts between entities and the funds who are active in this niche of the market – such as Apollo, Lone Star and Centerbridge, as well as Blackstone – these mortgages may now be placed on the market with discounts of less than 10% for the most subordinated (higher risk) tranches.

Nevertheless, these portfolios contain loans that borrowers have been repaying for more than 37 months without any help, thanks to the economic recovery, in other words, they contain “high quality” problem loans. In total, they will generate returns of more than 100 basis points above Euibor and so represent an interesting alternative for investors looking to take on more risk in the almost-zero interest rate environment.

Original story: Expansión (by Daniel Badía)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Lindorff Acquires 94% Of Aktua For €331M

3 May 2016  – Expansión

Santander retains a 6% stake / The fund Lindorff has acquired the real estate platform, along with its 400 employees and network of 20 offices from Centerbridge.

Lindorff is redoubling its commitment to Spain and, specifically, to the real estate sector. Yesterday, the fund reached an agreement with Centerbridge and the other shareholders to acquire 94% of Aktua, the platform that manages homes and debt from BMN, Ibercaja and some from Santander. According to reports by the Norwegian group, the operation is worth €313 million, including deferred and contingent payments. Santander will retain the remaining 6% stake.

Founded in 2008, the former real estate arm of Banesto, now has more than 400 employees and a network of more than 20 offices located all over the country. Following the purchase of Gestión de Inmuebles Salduvia, formerly owned by Ibercaja, the entity went onto manage more than 42,000 real estate assets, worth more than €8,000 million.

Centerbridge acquired the company from Santander’s subsidiary in 2012 for €100 million. The fund owned 83% of the capital, 6% belonged to Santander and the remainder, 11%, was shared between its own managers, including the CEO and former director of Banesto, Enrique Dancausa.

The company generated an operating profit of €38 million in 2015. “Spain is an important growth market for Lindorff”, said Klaus-Anders Nysteen, the CEO of Lindorff. “The operation provides us with a solid platform in the market for managing foreclosed assets, incorporating new capacities to achieve higher growth in the non-performing mortgage debt sector in Spain, and subsequently in other markets”, added Nysteen.

The purchase price and refinancing of Aktua’s debt will be financed by capital investment from Lindorff, as well as through the renewal of its credit lines, to reach €195 million.

Original story: Expansión (by J.Z. and D.B.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankia, Sabadell & CaixaBank Have Sold €17,000M Of Problem Assets

27 April 2016 – Expansión

Spain’s banks still need to get rid of €350,000 million of problem assets from their balance sheets, despite having already divested €65,000 million over the last five years. The leaders in the disposal of non-core assets so far have been CaixaBank, Sabadell and Bankia, although experts indicate that divestment of toxic loans and foreclosed assets may taken another ten more years.

That was the view of the Heads of Advisory for Financial Divestments at KPMG, Deloitte, N+1 and PwC. “After ten years in this market, I think that we still have another ten years worth of divestments ahead. This market is here to stay”, said Joel Grau yesterday, Partner and Co-founder of N+1’s Corporate Portfolio Advisors, at an event organised by Europa Press and Servihabitat.

In recent times, the rate of asset sales has amounted to between €16,000 million and €22,000 million per year and experts at KPMG predict that this year will be the second best in the history of the sector in Spain: “We expect to see an increase of 7% in terms of portfolio sales with respect to 2015, to reach €19,500 million, with the weight of mortgage portfolios and foreclosed assets accounting for 49% of the total”, said Amparo Solía, the Partner responsible for Corporate in the Finance and Real Estate Sector at KPMG, the consultancy firm that participates in half of all operations.

Of that figure of almost €20,000 million, there are currently almost €15,000 million in the market, according to Jaime Bergaz, the Partner responsible for Deals – Financial Sector at PwC. Of that amount, around half relates to portfolios with a real estate component: debt to property developers, mortgages and foreclosed assets.

Once again this year, the entities that are proving to be most active in the divestment market are Sabadell, CaixaBank and Bankia. According to KPMG, those three financial groups have sold off problem assets amounting to €17,000 million in the last three years, which represents 30% of all of the assets sold by Spain’s banks.

Bankia is the leader in the ranking, with €9,000 million sold in the last three years, according to the different consultancy firms, followed by Sabadell, with €4,500 million and CaixaBank, with €4,000 million. (…).

Sareb, BMN, Santander and BBVA have almost sold portfolios worth more than €2,000 million in the last three years.

In addition, Sabadell currently has two portfolios up for sale worth €1,300 million and is studying the possibility of bringing a third onto the market worth €1,700 million. Meanwhile, CaixaBank has an operation underway involving a portfolio of doubtful debts to property developers, worth €800 million; and Bankia is considering launching the sale of a package of doubtful mortgages. Moreover, Cajamar is also proving very active; Abanca has a portfolio of NPLs up for sale; and Popular is expected to be involved in some major deals during the second half of the year.

Solía, from KPMG and Grau, from N+1, predict a higher volume of portfolio sales in 2017, due to the new provisioning circular and the banks’ need to increase their returns.

Ahead of this improvement, funds are already managing 80% of the banks’ problem assets, through platforms that they have been buying up in recent years. Investors paid €4,000 million for the servicers and have absorbed 3,200 jobs from the financial institutions.

The acquired platforms include Altamira, in which Apollo owns an 85% stake; Aliseda, in which Värde and Kennedy Wilson hold a 51% stake; Servihabitat, of which 51% is controlled by TPG; Haya Real Estate, which Cerberus acquired from Bankia; and Aktua, which Centerbridge bought from Banesto and is now selling to Lindorff. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by J. Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Deutsche Bank Lends €50M To RE Firm Aktua

18 April 2016 – Expansión

Deutsche Bank was involved in the largest direct lending transaction in Spain last year. Moreover, 2016 is only three and a half months old, but the same bank is already the lender in one of the largest operations of the year. And with the same borrower.

In 2015, the real estate services platform Aktua was the recipient of a €150 million injection, which Deutsche Bank granted to refinance its debt and allow it to pay a dividend to its owner, the fund Centerbridge. Within the next few days, the details will be finalised regarding the transfer of that platform to Lindorff.

Now, the German bank has increased its loan amount by €50 million. The aim is for Aktua to be able to finance the purchase of the management of Ibercaja’s real estate assets, which the company announced in February.

With these two operations, the financing that Deustche Bank has granted to Aktua, the former real estate subsidiary of Banesto, amounts to €200 million, which increases the volume of direct lending operations that the German bank has completed in Spain. “In the corporate segment alone, we have lent more than €500 million in two or three years”, explains Jesús Medina, Director of Structured Finance at Deutsche Bank.

That amount also includes the funds loaned to the chocolate company Natra at the end of 2015. The German financing entity entered into a syndicate of lenders after purchasing the firm’s debt from a Spanish bank in the secondary market, and as a first step, it participated in the restructuring that Natra needed to complete to survive. But the second step involved putting new money on the table to enable the chocolate company to do more than survive. And it did so in the form of a direct loan, together with another debt fund, amounting to around €20 million. “Our feeling is that there are operations in the market and that the structured financing segment is going to continue to grow, but we have to meet the needs of the moment and the windows of opportunity that arise”, added the executive.

Original story: Expansión (by I. Abril and D. Badía)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Lindorff Buys Aktua From Centerbridge For c. €300M

21 March 2016 – El Confidencial

Aktua, the real estate services company created by the former Banesto, which was acquired by the opportunistic fund Centerbridge Partners in 2012, is about to change owners once again. The Norwegian company Lindorff has reached an agreement to complete the acquisition for almost €300 million, which will turn it into one of the largest landlords in Spain. The Scandinavian company has fought off competition from Apollo Capital Management, the toxic property management arm of Banco Santander, as well as the German firm Activum SG Capital Management.

According to several sources, Lindorff has won the auction led by Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Linklaters against those two opponents, and is now putting the finishing touches to the legal conditions so that it can close the operation. It has not been simple because, whilst Aktua was on the market, its parent company, Centerbridge, acquired the real estate arm of Ibercaja – on 2 February – which meant that it had to recalculate the numbers for the potential buyers.

Aktua manages around 42,000 properties worth almost €7,000 million; those assets will be added to those that Lindorff already manages in Spain. The Scandinavian company was one of the pioneers to invest in the real estate and recovery services sector when the crisis first began. In fact, in 2012, it bought Reintegra for €100 million, the subsidiary of Banco Santander dedicated to the recovery of doubtful debts, and in December 2014, it acquired Sabadell’s recovery arm, for which it paid €160 million. Along the way, it also acquired several non-performing debt portfolios, including several from the bank led by Ana Botín.

Currently, Lindorff España, which last year appointed Alejandro Zurbano as its CEO, employs more than 1,100 professionals and has a presence throughout the country, with offices in Madrid, Valladolid, A Coruña, Alicante, Barcelona, Granada, Jerez de la Frontera, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, San Sebastián and Valencia. The multi-national company from the North of Europe has almost 4,000 employees in total, located in its 11 countries of operation, including Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Germany.

Although the amount of some of its operations have not been made public, Lindorff has invested almost €1,000 million to become one of the largest landlords in the country. Its work involves managing homes and retail premises, owned by the various real estate companies that it has acquired, claiming the payment of unpaid loans from their owners and negotiating the debt to obtain a spread. Once the last details of the purchase have been finalised, Linforff will manage non-performing loans, homes, retail spaces and land owned by Banesto, Ibercaja, Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN), Santander and Sabadell.

The sale of Aktua was essential for the main overseas funds that have become the largest landlords in Spain, because it is a volume-based business that is currently still very atomised. Sources in the market expect to see a process of concentration in the sector, in which almost €10,000 million has been invested, mainly on the purchase of non-performing loan portfolios. Some are already leaving, such as Elliott, which recently sold its recovery management platform to Cabot, and Fortress, which has now put its main businesses in Spain up for sale: the financing company Lico Leasing and the loan management platform Paratus.

For Centerbridge, the sale of Aktua is going to generate a sizeable profit, given that it acquired the platform for around €100 million in 2012 and is now selling it for almost €300 million. The real estate platform of the opportunistic fund employs 400 people and generates a gross operating profit or EBITDA of around €50 million.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Agustín Marco)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ibercaja Outsources Its RE Management To Aktua

3 February 2016 – Expansión

Yesterday, the Aragonese group Ibercaja signed an agreement to outsource the management of its real estate assets to Aktua.

The platform, which is owned by the US fund Centerbridge, has itself been up for sale since the end of 2015. Altamira is one of the favourites in the running to acquire it.

The operation signed by Ibercaja is the first of its kind in the Spanish banking sector since 2013, when the large entities, such as Santander, CaixaBank, Bankia and Popular all sold their real estate platforms under management contracts lasting around ten years.

Those operations allowed the Spanish banks to raise capital in exchange for ceding future commissions, and transferring the administration and sale of their assets to specialist firms. Those deals allowed them to focus on their strategic business, namely: to grant loans and take deposits.

“This operation, which is going to have a positive impact on the income statement of Ibercaja Banco, aims to establish a stable partnership with a prestigious industrial partner, to strengthen the entity’s strategy of boosting the sale of its real estate assets through the retail channel and simplifying and optimising its structure in the real estate sector”, said Ibercaja in a statement.

With this operation, the financial group takes a step closer towards its future debut on the stock market in the medium term. This comes after the sale of the majority if its bad real estate loans to Oaktree last year.

Ibercaja has been advised in this process by N+1 and Baker & McKenzie, and Aktua has been advised by KPMG, as its financial and legal advisor.

Original story: Expansión (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake