Tag: delinquent loans

Sareb Creates A Portal To Sell €3,000M In Loans

29 September 2017 – Expansión

Sareb, the company in charge of liquidating the real estate portfolio of the nine savings banks rescued by the State, is seeking to streamline this process through an online channel aimed at institutional players only. The objective is to market more than €3,000 million in delinquent loans through the channel in 2018 alone, as the entity revealed yesterday at a conference with investors organised by SmithNovack in London.

With this portal, Sareb is seeking to not only enhance the transparency of these types of operations but also open up a new channel for smaller investors to be able to access the market. Ignacio Meylán, Director of Institutional Sales at Sareb, said that this initiative forms part of the innovation efforts being undertaken by the company, which is owned 45% by the State and 55% by private investors.

Milestones

During a preliminary pilot phase, the company invited around thirty investors to access a selection of loans, worth around €400 million, in such a way that they are able to submit bids on a loan-by-loan basis.

Meylán explained yesterday that the investors who have registered on the platform will have the opportunity to study the documentation and information relating to each loan, and then formulate their bids in limited and differentiated time periods.

Sareb is expecting to receive bids during the first half of October. The ultimate objective is to expand the core group of investors interested in these assets and, further down the line, take these types of products to local investors interested in acquiring the properties, both residential and other, that secure these loans.

Next year, the bad bank plans to launch six sales processes through this online channel. Each one will include loans worth at least €500 million, and so, it will end up putting a minimum of €3,000 million in toxic assets on the market in a single year.

Portfolios

In addition to this initiative, Sareb has just placed Portfolio Inés on the radars of the opportunistic funds. The portfolio comprises delinquent loans with a nominal value of €500 million. The entity hopes to close the transaction in October. The bad bank is also working on the launch of another portfolio, called Tambo, whose volume amounts to between €250 million and €300 million. The final quarter of the year is typically the most active for divestments of this kind.

The European authorities calculate that Europe’s financial entities hold almost €1 billion (€1,000,000,000,000) in doubtful loans on their balance sheets and that they are making their viability difficult in many cases.

A new record will be set in this market this year, since the start of the crisis, due to the Popular operation, the largest in the history of Spain, which was awarded to Blackstone.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cerberus Finalises Purchase Of Liberbank’s RE Arm For €85M

31 July 2017 – Voz Pópuli

The sale of Liberbank’s real estate arm will be closed in a matter of days. And the candidate that is most likely to acquire Mihabitans (the name of its property arm) is Haya Real Estate, the platform owned by Cerberus in Spain, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

Haya Real Estate and Liberbank are now holding advanced conversations to close an agreement for €85 million after the servicer’s final offer proved to be more convincing than Aktua’s, the former real estate arm of Banesto, which is now owned by the Norwegian group Lindorff. Both the Asturian bank and Haya Real Estate declined to comment.

The agreement includes the sale of Mihabitans to Haya Real Estate as well as an agreement to manage Liberbank’s foreclosed assets for a period of seven years.

Manuel Menéndez, CEO at the bank, explained on Thursday, that the aim of the sale of Mihabitans is to accelerate the divestment of foreclosed assets with a more professional style of management and the generation of business through an agreement for Liberbank to grant new mortgages.

This pact is key for the entity given that it sends a clear message to the market that its objective is to remain independent, despite the pressure from the regulators for a new wave of mergers between the medium-sized savings banks.

Road to independence

Liberbank is doing its utmost this year to convince the market that it is in no way similar to Popular, after the stock market pain it suffered following the rescue of the entity purchased by Santander. After controlling the decline in its share price through a veto on short positions, the group led by Menéndez presented its results on Thursday, which showed that its default rate had registered a decrease of more than 1.5 p.p. to 11.3%, representing an improvement on the objectives announced.

One of the trends to reduce the default rate has been to execute many of the delinquent loans, and so the bank has taken ownership of the corresponding properties. For that reasons, despite registering a record quarter in terms of house sales (€75 million), the volume of foreclosed properties remained stable: €3,115 million.

Liberbank wants to set some ambitious sales targets as part of the agreement that it is now close to signing with Haya Real Estate: the sale of €410 million this year; €625 million next year; and €850 million in 2019. Sales of wholesale portfolios will also be included in this strategy.

Haya Real Estate groups together the management of entities such as Bankia (formerly Bankia Habitat), Cajamar and Sareb. It earned €31 million last year and has almost 700 employees. Two years ago, it negotiated a possible merger with Solvia, owned by Sabadell, and at the end of last year, it evaluated the purchase of Unicaja Banco’s real estate arm.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake