Tag: Centricus

Centricus Still Leads Race to Acquire Haya Real Estate

10 December 2019 – The potential sale of the real estate asset manager Haya Real Estate is firming up as the new Spanish government coalition has made reassuring statements regarding the sale and the sector. After the elections on November 10, the left-leaning political parties PSOE and Unidos Podemos signed a pre-agreement to form a government. Market watchers feared that the new government would look unkindly at the sale.

Centricus is currently leading the race to acquire Haya, though DoBank, Intrum and Centerbridge are still seen to be in contention. Cerberus, which owns Haya Real Estate, is looking to finalise the deal by the end of the year.

The US firm’s sale of the servicer has suffered a serious of reversals.  Cerberus initially looked to list the firm on the Spanish stock market with a preliminary valuation of €1.3 billion. In March, the listing was cancelled due to doubts regarding Haya’s asset management contract with Sareb, and the price lowered to €1,2 billion.

Bids for Haya’s €42.431-billion portfolio are currently said to range between 600 and 700 million euros.

Original Story: Cinco Diás

Adaptation/Translation: Richard D. K. Turner

 

Centricus Rethinks its Potential Acquisition of Haya Real Estate

2 December 2019 – Softbank’s Centricus investment fund is rethinking its expected acquisition of Haya Real Estate from Cerberus. The US firm originally valued Haya at one billion euros, though it dropped its asking price due to doubts regarding Haya’s contract with Sareb.

Despite Haya’s success in renewing its management contract with the bad bank, Haya’s revenues could still be reduced by 50%. Sareb also reduced the agreed-upon fixed fees and payments in return for variable payments. At the same time, Softbank as recently needed to inject large amounts of funds to save its investment in the troubled WeWork.

Original Story: Eje Prime

Adaptation/Translation: Richard D. K. Turner

Cerberus Nears Sale of Haya Real Estate to Centricus

10 September 2019

The US-fund Cerberus is near to completing its planned sale of its servicer, Haya Real Estate. Centricus, a London-based fund backed by Softbank, is considered the leading contender to acquire the asset. Both firms declined to comment.

Market sources believe that the firms may finalise the transaction in the coming days. The amount of the sale partly depends on Haya’s renegotiation of its contract with Sareb. Cerberus had initially planned a stock market listing for its servicer, but doubts regarding that renegotiation led the US fund to shelve those plans.

The US fund then opted to sell the service, and in the early summer, Cerberus received three competing offers for Haya, estimated to be around ​​700 million euros, from doBank, Centerbridge and Centricus.

Original Story: La Información  – Pepe Bravo

Adaptation/Translation: Richard D. K. Turner

Cerberus Receives 3 “Low” Offers For its Stake in Haya Real Estate

24 May 2019 – El Confidencial

Cerberus may be forced to revise down its price expectations for the sale of its real estate platform Haya Real Estate. The US fund had been hoping to receive more than €1 billion for the servicer, which is one of the largest in Spain, but so far the offers it has received amount to just €700 million.

There are currently three candidates in the running, namely, the Italian firm doBank, the US fund Centerbridge and the Asian fund Centricus, according to financial sources – all are familiar faces in the Spanish market and are willing to buy the servicer, but not for the asking price.

The reason is that considerable uncertainty exists over the renewal of Haya’s contract with Sareb, despite Cerberus’s efforts to diversify and grow the servicer’s portfolio with purchases such as the Apple Portfolio from Santander last year, and the agreement to purchase and manage almost all of BBVA’s property. Haya also administers assets for Bankia, Cajamar and Liberbank.

Nevertheless, Haya’s main client is still Sareb, for which it manages €21 million in debt and properties, which account for around half of the platform’s assets. That figure will fall to around a third following the agreement with Divarian, formerly Anida (BBVA), but Sareb wants to significantly reduce both the perimeter of management and the fees that it pays Haya, which would hit the servicer’s revenues hard.

As such, the funds in the running to purchase Haya are requesting protection clauses to cover themselves in the event of the various outcomes from the negotiations with Sareb, which are expected to conclude in September. Whether Cerberus will manage to sell its servicer before then remains to be seen.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Jorge Zuloaga & Ruth Ugalde)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Cerberus Puts Haya Real Estate up for Sale for c. €1.2bn

15 March 2019 – Eje Prime

Cerberus had been planning to list Haya Real Estate on the stock market but it suspended that operation in light of the political instability in the country, amongst other reasons. Instead, the US fund has decided to put the servicer up for sale.

The asking price is €1.2 billion and the advisor Rothschild has already made contact with possible interested parties. They include DoBank, which acquired Altamira in January for €412 million; the Swedish company Intrum, which purchased 80% of Solvia in December; and the fund manager Centricus.

Haya’s contract with Sareb is due to expire at the end of this year and the bad bank is understood to be considering not renewing the agreement as part of a wider strategic rethink.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Sabadell Puts ‘Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios’ Up for Sale

19 January 2019 – El Periódico 

Banco Sabadell has launched the sales process of Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios (SDIN), the company that owns the bank’s land and which carries out its real estate development projects in Spain. On Friday, the entity placed the sales brochure for the firm in the hands of possible buyers, including international real estate funds, such as Cerberus, Blackstone, Värde and Oaktree, amongst others, according to confirmation provided by real estate sources. The process, regarding which the bank itself has declined to comment, could go on until April. The time necessary for buyers to express their interest and conduct analysis of the company for sale.

The process to sell the development company is beginning just a month after the bank chaired by Josep Oliu completed the sale of 80% of its servicer – real estate manager – to Lindorff Holding Spain, a company that belongs to the Swedish fund Intrum, after it fought off competition from the funds Cerberus and Centricus, which were also bidding for the real estate subsidiary. In that operation, Solvia was valued at €300 million. The price corresponded to 80% of the stake in the company, which could be increased by a maximum amount of €40 million if certain conditions, relating to the performance of some of Solvia’s lines of business, are met. The completion of the operation is scheduled for the second half of 2019.

Maturity period

SDIN is in the maturity period for its sale, according to sources familiar with the operation. The firm has a stock of more than 300 buildable plots, which are worth around €1.2 billion and has almost 130 developments underway across different parts of Spain, with more than 5,000 homes under construction. The size of the portfolio of SDIN, which is led by Francisco Pérez (pictured above), places it in the second league in the sector ranking, just behind the listed property developers, led by Metrovacesa, Neinor, Aedas and Vía Célere. Only Sareb has more assets (…).

Original story: El Periódico (by Max Jiménez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Banco Sabadell Sells 80% of Solvia to Intrum for €300M

14 December 2018 – Diario Financiero

Banco Sabadell announced today that it has agreed the sale of 80% of its real estate manager Solvia to the Nordic fund Intrum, in an operation that is going to generate €138 million of profits for the bank, which will go some way to strengthening its capital.

The real estate management platform has been valued for the operation at €300 million, and that amount may increase by a second amount of up to €40 million if the conditions established for the evolution of certain lines of business are met, according to a report filed by the bank today with Spain’s National Securities and Markets Commission (CNMV).

The transaction will strengthen the bank’s most demanding capital ratio (the fully loaded CET 1) by 15 basis points, due to the generation of the aforementioned profits of €138 million.

The Intrum group has been awarded the manager through its company Lindorff Holding, fighting off competition from the Arab fund Centricus and Haya Real Estate, the platform owned by Cerberus.

Solvia manages the divestment of non-performing assets by Sabadell, together with portfolios of the bad bank or Sareb.

Original story: Diario Financiero

Translation: Carmel Drake

Savills Values Solvia’s Property Developer Land at €1.3bn

12 December 2018 – El Confidencial

The banks are starting to benefit from the recovery in the real estate sector. Such is the case of Banco Sabadell, which has seen its portfolio of prime land appreciate by €300 million, or 30%, in recent months, ahead of its firing of the starting gun for the sale of its property developer, Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios.

That is the result of an appraisal of the land that the consultancy firm Savills Aguirre Newman has performed for Sabadell. Initially, the plots were valued at €1 billion. They are the best quality plots of land that Sabadell has left since the outbreak of the crisis, and many of them are in areas with high demand in Madrid and Barcelona. For Savills, the chosen plots are now worth almost €1.3 billion, according to financial sources consulted by this newspaper.

Now that the appraisal has been performed, Sabadell and its chosen advisor for this operation, Rothschild, will launch the sale of the property developer SDI and the plots worth €1.3 billion, imminently.

This operation will result in the creation of one of the largest real estate companies in Spain. It will be even larger than Neinor when it was purchased by Lone Star.

The bank does not expect to close the sale of Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios before the end of the first quarter of 2019. By contrast, Sabadell has also launched the sale of Solvia Servicios Inmobiliarios (the management platform), which is on the market for €300 million and whose sale it hopes to close in 2018. According to Expansión, Haya Real Estate (Cerberus), Intrum and Centricus are participating in that process.

Candidates

There are several funds amongst the candidates to acquire the property developer SDI including: Cerberus, Oaktree, Blackstone, Apollo and Lone Star. The first features in everyone’s list of likely contenders because of its good relationship with Sabadell in recent major operations. Moreover, it owns a property developer, Inmoglacier, with which there could be synergies following the operation.

Meanwhile, Oaktree is one of the candidates that would start with an advantage, given that it is Sabadell’s partner in similar businesses, and so it knows the team at SDI: they have a platform for the joint development of land and they have purchased land from Iberdrola. Nevertheless, according to sources close to the operation, that fund still needs to confirm its presence in the process.

Other candidates that still need to define their strategies include Blackstone, which is studying all of the operations with Aliseda, but which has opted more for rental assets until now; Apollo, which has wanted to enter the development segment for years; and Lone Star, which since its exit from Neinor has purchased Servihabitat and has as much appetite for Spanish property as it did before the crisis. ‘A priori’, the operation seems large for Bain Capital, owner of Habitat.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake