Offers for Gescobro Fall Short of Cerberus’s Asking Price

13 May 2019 – La Información

Cerberus Capital Management cannot find a buyer for Gescobro. The US investment fund put the debt recovery specialist on the market at the beginning of the year, but so far the offers submitted have fallen well below its expectations in terms of price.

Hoist Finance, the Spanish subsidiary of a Swedish bank, and Cabot, a British fund dedicated to the purchase of non-performing loans (NPLs), have expressed the greatest interest in Gescobro, but their offers, amounting to around €200 million each, fall well short of Cerberus’s initial expectations of between €300 million and €350 million.

Sources in the market are questioning the value that Cerberus is assigning to Gescobro, given the current market prices and its operating profit (its EBITDA amounted to €11.3 million in 2018). Nevertheless, the US fund is defending its price thanks to the high number of problem loan portfolios that the company has acquired in recent years, whose gross value amounts to more than €8.6 billion.

Specifically, Gescobro is currently managing 12 unsecured loan portfolios with a combined nominal value of €8.3 million and 2 secured loan portfolios with a nominal value of €300 million. The prices of such portfolios typically reach less than 5% and around 30%, respectively. The debt recovery firm also employs 410 workers and has agreements to manage €3.5 billion in NPLs for the main Spanish banks.

Original story: La Información (by Pepe Bravo)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake