Asur’s Two Hotels Go Up for Auction for €70M

30 November 2017 – ABC

The judge of Mercantile Court number 2 in Sevilla, Pedro Márquez, has approved the liquidation plan for the company Ámbito Sur Hoteles (Asur), which includes the direct sale, by auction, of the two production units associated with the four-star hotels that the company owns in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) and Isla Antilla (Huelva). Both are operated by the chain Ohtels. Asur, which also owns land in Manilva as well as 81 tourist apartments in La Línea, filed for liquidation after accumulating debt of €90 million, most of which corresponded to loans from Banco Popular (now Santander), Cajasur, Sabadell and Sareb (the so-called bad bank).

The Hotel Asur Campo de Gibraltar and its adjacent car park are worth €21 million, although the debt associated with that production unit amounts to €20.7 million, mostly loaned from Cajasur. Meanwhile, Hotel Asur Islantilla Suites & Spa has an asking price of €48.7 million and that is offset by loans amounting to €41.5 million, of which €38 million was initially granted by Banco Popular (now Santander). That hotel also houses a conference centre.

Although several creditor banks made a request for the mortgage debt over the hotels to be foreclosed, the judge from the Mercantile Court has ruled for them to be sold as separate production units, relegating the mortgage foreclosure to a subsequent time if the auction is abandoned (…).

The bankruptcy administrator, in the hands of the law firm Maio Martínez Escribano, will receive offers for the hotels and the two plots of land in Manilva until 16 December. If by then it has not received any offers for more than 75% of the real value of the estates, then the period for the submission of offers will be extended by one month, to 16 January.

If an offer is received for less than 75% of the real value of the hotels, the main creditors (Cajasur in the case of the hotel in Campo de Gibraltar and Santander in the case of the hotel in Islantilla) will have to approve the operation. The bankruptcy administrator will have the power to choose the most favourable offer without having to obtain legal authorisation for the sale.

In the event that the two hotels are not sold directly through this first auction, the sale will be undertaken through a specialist entity, such as a real estate consultancy firm, which will be granted a five-month period to that end. If that sales option also fails, a “dación en pago” of the properties will be carried out. Only in the event that the hotels cannot be sold in that way either will the properties be auctioned off individually and not as production units.

The history of Asur

The company Asur was created in 2010 by the Basque group Bruesa Construcción and the Nazarene real estate company Baremos Área Inversiones (…).

Original story: ABC (by M. J. Pereira)

Translation: Carmel Drake