Tag: Hotel Dolce Sitges

BBVA Sells its Former HQ in Bilbao to Angelo Gordon for c. €100M

25 September 2018 – Expansión

The former corporate headquarters of Banco de Vizcaya is being converted, 50 years later, into Torre Bizkaia. BBVA, the owner of the property at number 1 Gran Vía in Bilbao, has reached an agreement with the investment fund Angelo Gordon to sell it the building for around €100 million.

The sale – which has been subject to negotiations since before the summer – will close within the next few days, according to sources in the sector, and will become the US fund’s largest operation in Spain, where it purchased the Hotel Dolce Sitges in Barcelona from Oaktree a year ago for €40 million.

The new owner already has tenants for the property. In addition to the Irish multi-national textile retailer Primark, which has committed to lease the ground and first five floors for 30 years, the Bilbao local government is going to lease the remaining floors to centralise its provincial services in the tower, which is going to be called Torre Bizkaia.

That move was announced yesterday by the President of Bizkaia, Unai Rementería (…). According to Rementería, BBVA’s departure from the building represented the end of an era, with which the financial weight of Bilbao was extinguished. “Now the provincial government is lighting up the tower again and is starting a new era of new ideas and businesses”, he said.

In addition to the services of the provincial council, the property will house on eight of its floors, an international centre for entrepreneurship, a project promoted by the provincial council and the Town Hall of Bilbao. According to Rementería, those eight floors will be “the heart” of the tower, and through them, they will seek to boost activity, recover economic weight, and reinforce the innovative profile and entrepreneurial spirit of Bilbao and Bizkaia.

The property on Gran Vía was constructed in 1969 as the headquarters of Banco Vizcaya, on the location occupied by the financial institution’s first headquarters. The building has 21 storeys in total, as well as the ground floor, and spans a total above-ground surface area of 23,000 m2.

Abandon

Following the merger with Banco Bilbao, the BBVA tower housed the operating headquarters of the bank, although the corporate headquarters remained – as it does today – in the former headquarters of Banco Bilbao in Plaza de San Nicolás. In recent years, the financial institution has gradually abandoned the property, which all of the employees left in March 2016.

Original story: Expansión (by M. Á. F.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

CBRE: Hotel Inv’t Will Exceed €3,000M In 2017

10 October 2017 – Observatorio Inmobiliario

The summer holidays led to a slow down in hotel investment in Spain during the third quarter of 2017, after 6 months of euphoria and record-breaking deals, when more than €1,400 million was invested. By contrast, investment volumes reached just €240 million during the months of July, August and September, which represents a 55% decrease compared to the same period in 2016.

Nevertheless, the most significant operations of the quarter took place during the month of September, which, together with the major sale and purchase operations that are in the pipeline, suggests that hotel investment in Spain will accelerate again during the last few months of the year, according to CBRE Hotels. The consultancy predicts that the volume of investment may reach €3,000 million in 2017, which would represent a historical record, exceeding even the figure registered in 2015.

According to data collected by CBRE Hotels, between July and September, investors spent €240 million on the purchase of hotel assets, including not only hotels per se but also tourist apartments, aparthotels and plots of land and buildings dedicated to hotel use. In total, 22 assets were transacted (involving 2,500 rooms), with holiday hotels accounting for the lion’s share (65%) of the total amount invested (and representing 80% of the rooms sold).

In terms of the destination of investments, in the urban sphere, deals were very evenly distributed between Spain’s main cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Granada, Valencia and Bilbao. Nevertheless, in the holiday segment, investors spent 45% of their total investment in the two archipelagos (i.e. in the Canary and Balearic Islands).

In terms of the most significant operations, within the holiday perimeter, the acquisitions undertaken by Portobello Capital stand out – it was the most active investor during the third quarter of the year, starring in the purchase of several assets/stakes in hotels managed by Blue Sea Hotels & Resorts. In the urban segment, the most high-profile purchase involved Hotel Parque Central de Valencia by Senator Hotels & Resorts.

In the end, and just like during the first two quarters of the year, CBRE Hotels also brokered two operations during the third quarter. Firstly, it intermediated the sale of Hotel Dolce Sitges (5* and 263 rooms), which also became the most significant transaction of the quarter (in both the hotel and urban segments). On the other hand, the company executed the sale of a plot of land in Bilbao destined for the construction of the first hotel in the city of the Catalonia Hotels & Resorts chain. For Jorge Ruiz, Director of CBRE Hotels in Spain, “the unprecedented performance of the hotel sector during the first half of the year, both in terms of investment and operations, added to the volume transacted during the third quarter and the projects underway, suggest that investment in the sector could reach €3,000 million this year, whereby exceeding the record set in 2015”.

Original story: Observatorio Inmobiliario

Translation: Carmel Drake

Oaktree Sells Hotel Dolce Sitges For €40M

3 July 2017 – Preferente

The US fund Oaktree Capital Management is going to sell the Hotel Dolce Sitges in Barcelona. Specialising in conferences and conventions, the establishment will now be taken over by Talus Real Estate, together with the US fund Angelo Gordon.

According to Expansión, the negotiations are already well advanced and the transaction is expected to be closed this week, for just over €40 million. Oaktree has been looking to sell this hotel for a year; it acquired the property in 2015.

Operated by Wyndham, the Hotel Dolce Sitges opened its doors in October 2004. It specialises in the MICE segment (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions), as well as in high-end holiday tourism.

The 5-star property has 263 rooms, a spa and fitness centre. It also has four outdoor pools and one indoor pool, as well as 2,175 m2 of space dedicated to meeting and conference rooms, spread over 38 meeting rooms and an amphitheatre.

This operation comes shortly after Iberdrola Inmobiliaria sold 55% of the Hotel Hilton Diagonal Mar in Barcelona to Axa Investment Managers Real Assets for €80 million.

The area of Barcelona where this latest hotel is situated, Sitges, has more than 5,000 hotel beds and is enjoying a boom as a tourist destination, following several recent operations, such as HI Partners’ acquisition of Hotel Terramar and Leo Messi’s recent purchase of the boutique Hotel Mim.

Original story: Preferente (by R. P.)

Translation: Carmel Drake