Tag: high standing offices

28 April 2016 – Expansión

Procisa– the real estate company owned by the García Cereceda family – is finalising an agreement with the American fund Värde Partners to sell it a 40% stake in its office business, which includes, amongst others, assets in the exclusive La Finca Business Park, located in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), according to sources in the sector. (…)

Procisa, the group that specialises in offices and luxury residential developments, recently constituted a company under the name Grupo La Finca and divided its business into two distinct areas: one operating in the office segment, which is where Värde will acquire its stake; and the other operating in the residential business, which will continue to be fully owned by Procisa.

Susana García Cereceda will continue to lead the new Grupo La Finca, where she will serve as CEO, the same role that she currently performs in Procisa’s family business.

In the same way, García Cereceda will lead the two business lines into which the group has been divided.

To complete the organigram of the new real estate company, it is expected that new members with experience and background in the sector will join the company over the next few months.

Residential business

In terms of the residential business, Grupo La Finca wants to expand through new housing developments, as well as in the exclusive development in Pozuelo de Alarcón, next to the Parque Empresarial. The main features of this urbanisation include security, privacy and exclusivity. The group’s intention is to develop a new complex, to complement the detached and terraced houses that currently comprise La Finca.

With its upcoming investment in La Finca Global Assets (the name of La Finca’s office division), Värde Partners, which currently controls the real estate division of Grupo San José, with a 51% shareholding, and which also owns a stake in Popular’s servicer Aliseda, will take a leap into the high standing office business, which will allow it to expand its presence in the commercial and professional business segment in the future.

The private equity fund Värde Partners has been one of the most active investors in Spain since the crisis began. Its first major operation was closed last August, when it acquired 51% of the real estate company San José to construct 1,500 homes in Spain.

In 2014, it purchased 51% of Banco Popular-e’s card business, whereby the entity recorded profits of more than €400 million.

Moreover, a year earlier, it acquired, together with Kennedy Wilson, the real estate arm of Popular, Aliseda, for approximately €800 million. At the global level, the fund, founded in Minnesota in 1993, manages more than USD 40,000 million and has 200 employees around the world, of which 65 are professional investors with more than 12 years of experience.

From now on, its assets in Spain will include La Finca Global Assets, whose assets comprise not only the La Finca business park, but also other iconic buildings owned by Procisa, including a business centre comprising seven, 7-storey buildings on Calle Marcelo Spínola and another property comprising three, 7-storey buildings on Calle Martínez Villergas. (…).

Meanwhile, the park in La Finca, has a surface area of premium leasable space covering 27,000 m2, comprising 20 buildings (16 offices and 4 for the provision of services for use by office workers). Current tenants include companies such as Orange and Microsoft. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake