Vinci Park In Exclusive Negotiations To Buy Empark For €900M

23 April 2015 – Expansión

Exclusivity / The group controlled by Ardian will purchase the parking space market leader, which has debt of €500 million.

Yesterday, the French company Vinci Park (controlled by the fund Ardian, together with Credit Agricole and Vinci) announced that it had begun exclusive negotiations with the shareholders of Empark regarding the “potential purchase” of the market leading parking space company in Spain and Portugal, which is controlled by Portuguese shareholders. “We are still negotiating to arrive at a final agreement” say sources at Vinci Park. The company is committed to maintaining an investment grade rating.

A few days ago, Empark’s shareholders said that an agreement with Vinci was imminent for the sale of a controlling stake.

Financial troubles

Other investors have expressed interest in Empark, valued at around €900 million (including debt of €500 million), including the Spanish businessman Eugenio Hinojosa who, with the support of several financial institutions, including Santander, designed a purchase offer to compete against the bid made by the French group. Empark will have to explain the transaction to its bondholders in London.

Assips is Empark’s controlling shareholder, with a 50.3% stake – the vehicle is controlled by the Portuguese firm A. Silva & Silva, which is in turn controlled by the founding families of the company who participate in the management of the group.

The top executives at Empark, which manages 500,000 parking spaces in Spain, Portugal, UK and Turkey, are José Augusto Tavares (Chairman), Pedro Mendes (CEO) and Antonio Moura.

The remaining capital is divided amongst several investment funds managed by BES (22%) and Ahorro Corporación (8.2%). The Mello family holds a 2.6% stake. These shareholders will also sell (their stakes) to Vinci Park.

Other movements

The controlling shareholders commissioned JPMorgan and Caixa Banco de Investimento (CBI) to search for a buyer in 2014. One of the reasons for exiting the company (which they acquired from Ferrovial in 2008) has been the financial troubles of the Portuguese shareholders, which have been going through a complicated bankruptcy process and have had to deal with debt maturities in recent months.

Empark recorded sales of €180 million in 2013 and a gross operating profit (EBITDA) of €63.3 million. During the first three months of 2014, Empark recorded turnover of €42.8 million, down 0.6% (on the previous year) and a gross profit of €15.3 million, in line with 2013. Vinci Park, which has operated in Spain since 1994, manages 39 car parks in various cities across the country. The company also has a presence in a further thirteen countries and generates total revenues of €704 million.

The sale of Empark coincides with the decision by KKR, Torreal and ProA to sell 49% of Saba.

Original story: Expansión (by C.Morán and D.Badía)

Translation: Carmel Drake

KKR Considers Buying One Third Of Acciona’s RE Subsidiary

18 March 2015 – El Confidencial

The group owned by the Entrecanales family is looking for a partner to allow it to ‘ride the wave’ of the real estate recovery and has invited the US fund to be its travel companion.

KKR. The acronym of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has become Acciona’s most important partner in recent times. Last June, the private equity giant purchased a third of the international renewable energy business owned by the Entrecanales family’s group for €417 million, and in a stroke, that allowed the Spanish group to clean up its accounts, fulfil its divestment plan six months early and rethink other sales that it had on the table, such as Bestinver and Acciona Inmobiliaria.

The sale of the latter became more attractive after the company was strengthened through the hiring of Walter de Luna, who was until then the number two at Sareb, as the CEO, and Luis Moreno, who was his right hand man at the bad bank; they joined the company with the clear challenge of designing a plan for growth. Nevertheless, that plan requires resources and, once again, Acciona’s American friend seems to be willing to help out.

According to knowledgeable sources, KKR is considering buying share capital in Acciona Inmobiliaria; and if the negotiations between the two parties go well, they will culminate in a third large transaction between the fund and the Spanish group, because, as well as having acquired the international renewable energy business from the construction company, KKR has also created a joint venture with the Spanish group, containing wind assets, the famous ‘yieldco’, which it expects to list on the Nasdaq soon.

In recent official presentations, Acciona itself has formally acknowledged the badly-kept secret that it is looking for a partner to inject the money it needs to reinvigorate its real estate subsidiary and thus be in a position to benefit from the recovery that is emerging in the sector, now that it has managed to sort out the direction of the parent company.

The book value of Acciona Inmobiliaria amounts to c. €1,500 million and market sources indicate that the goal of the Entrecanales family would be for the new partner to take ownership of around one third of its share capital. Nevertheless, other alternatives have also been put on the table (in the discussions with KKR), such as tackling projects together, since the Spanish group has (lots of) projects (in the pipeline) and the American fund has cash.

KKR’s commitment to Spain

Spain has become a priority market for KKR in Europe, where its Operations Director, the Spaniard Jesús Olmos, has been the main driver behind the firm’s growth in our country in recent years. He has led the investment of more than 2,400 million dollars in companies such as Saba, Telepizza, Uralita, Grupo Alfonso Gallardo, Port Aventura, T-Solar and, of course, Acciona. These transactions have been strengthened by the fund’s decision to open an office in Madrid and recruit Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who was the CEO of 3i España until last December.

Now, one of KKR’s next goals in our country is to position itself as a player of reference in the real estate sector, as well as to open its sphere of operation to investments in credit and to continue its growth in infrastructure.

Meanwhile, after seven years of crisis and various failed sale attempts, Acciona Inmobiliaria managed to recover in 2014 to record positive results; it closed last December with an EBITDA – earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation – of €3 million, compared with losses of €2 million a year earlier.

The group owned by the Entrecanales family values its subsidiary at €1,529 million, of which it considers around 70% (€1,199 million) to be gross gains by the group. By geographical region, 87% of the subsidiaries’ assets are located in Spain and only 13% are overseas; whereas if we analyse the subsidiary in terms of turnover, 45% relates to property (primarily residential), 37% corresponds to land in Spain, 8% is land overseas and development activity accounts for the remaining 10%.

Original story: El Confidencial (by R. Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

KKR Hires Alejo Vidal-Quadras to Run the Madrid Office

2/12/2014 – Vozpopuli

US-based fund KKR has announced the appointment of Alejo Vidal-Quadras de Caralt as Director of its new office in Madrid. The branch will focus on the fund’s activity development and support in Spain, as well as on reinforcing the market coverage for the other investment platforms like credit , infrastructure and real estate.

According to KKR, hiring Mr. Vidal-Quadras de Caralt confirms the solid bet the fund placed on Spain, a ‘strategic’ country for its growth in Europe. Over the last year, the company has invested more than €1.92 billion within its borders.

The son of the chairman of VOX will coordinate deals in Spain and Portugal. Prior to joining KKR, the new director worked for nine years in a firm called 3i and sat in six boards of directors. Before that, the expert advised on mergers and acqusitions at Rothschild, Madrid.

As Member and Head of European Infrastructure and Head of Spain Jesus Olmos said, ‘we have been investing in the country since 2010 and we are expanding our team with an aim of providing our partners with long-term capital, as well as with our comprehensive knowledge about global industry. We are convinced that support from Alejo, especially in terms of Spanish market, will be of tremendous help for us’, he added.

The new director feels ‘unspokenly happy’ as he may belong to such a proven company with an impeccable track records.

 

Original article: Vozpopuli

Translation: AURA REE

KKR & Neinver Establish a Joint Venture With Intention to Buy Two Shopping Parks

12/09/2014 – Expansion

KKR and Neinver have set up a joint venture with view to acquiring the Nassica and the Vista Alegre shopping malls from Pilar Retail European Fund controlled by British Land.

The first, commercial and entertainment center of 50.000 square meters, is located in the south of Madrid, while the other shopping park of 16.000 square meters in total is situated in Zamora.

In opinion of KKR London division director and the head of KKR European Real Estate, Guillaume Cassou, this deal will be their first to seal on the Spanish property market. Likewise, the company is ready to fully commit to adding value to the assets together with Neinver.

Since establishing a real estate – specialized business arm in 2011, KKR has pledged to invest a total amount of €1.24 billion in 26 real estate operations in the USA, Europe and Asia.

On the part of Neinver, its CEO Daniel Losantos has expressed satisfaction from the agreement with KKR.

The Spanish group developed Nassica in 2002. Present on the local market for over 45 years, currently Neinver manages 500.000 square meters of retail space, 2.000 shops, out of which 900 are the prime brands. The company has got branches in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Poland.

 

Original article: Expansión (after: Efe)

Translation: AURA REE

Bonomi Sells 49.9% of Port Aventura to KKR

Investindustrial, the group of the Italian family Bonomi, has sold 49.9% of Port Aventura to the venture-capital company KKR. Last year, the Italian group paid 105 million Euros to CaixaBank for its share. According to sources close to the transaction, now it has sold for more than mentioned amount. Bonomi will hold the remaining 50.1% of the capital.

Port Aventura, situated in Vila Seca and Salou (Tarragona), earned 180 millions last year and received 3.8 million visitors. Apart from being an amusement park, the entertainment complex is supported by four hotels (offering 2.000 rooms in total), a convention center and three golfcourses.

The entrance of the venture-capital company followed the announcement of the construction of six  hotels in BCN World, a complex adjoining Port Aventura, even though not all of them will be raised in the first stage. Thus, the new partner will strengthen the shareholding before an investment that could oscilate around 140 and 170 million Euros.

(…) One of the company´s goals is to attract more foreign visitors, both to the theme park and its area of events and conventions. Presently, 45% of the visitors come from outside of Spain and the company aspires to 70%. This way the company could decrease its dependency on the Spanish market and deseasonalise the activity of the park.

According to Port Aventura, “Investindustrial has spotted potential alliances with the leader brands in sector of entertainment on international level that will implement in the forthcoming years with help of KKR, which will contribute its global network in tourism and entertainment sector.” Among other companies in Spain, KKR possesses 18.2% of Saba.

The transaction has been conducted with funding of CaixaBank and with advisory of JP Morgan, AZ Capital, KPMG, Uría Menéndez and Lazard.

Since Investindustrial incorporated into the shareholding of Port Aventura in 2009, there have been carried out investments of 100 million Euros. (…).

Next year, Port Aventura will hold daily shows of Cirque du Soleil during two months, which might become a permament attraction in the future.

The BCN World project is awaiting the Catalan Parlament´s approvement on tax reduction supposed to pass down from 20-50% to 10%.

Source: Expansión

Spain: for sale.

Spain is for sale. And finally, it seems there are buyers. Dozens of investment funds from all over the world, but mostly from the United States, are buying apartment blocks, real estate firms, and even company debt. There are some vulture funds out for a quick buck, but most are looking for medium-term returns. “Two years ago, Spain was radioactive, and the property sector toxic. Suddenly it’s become our savior; it’s that stupid,” says one veteran real estate developer on condition of anonymity.

On February 7, 2012, when the future of the euro was still in the balance, Jaime Bergel, a former board member of energy giant Endesa, opened an office for 13-billion-dollar US investment fund HIG Capital in Madrid. “We had a feeling that people would come here looking for opportunities,” he says. In fact Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs were already here.

On August 6 of this year, HIG carried out its so-called Operation Toro, the first major sell-off of property accumulated by Sareb, the bank set up by the government to hoard unsold property and debt belonging to the country’s failed savings banks. HIG bought around 500 properties for a total of 50 million euros. Most of the properties are low-cost apartments in the outskirts of Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Málaga, Murcia and in the Canary Islands that so far nobody wants.

Investment funds have spent around two billion euros buying up property in Spain since April. Some experts are interpreting the great sell-off as good news, flushing the financial system with new money; others say that it is a de facto takeover of a significant chunk of the economy by foreign capital.

“We are looking for businesses with good assets and that are well managed but that can’t get their hands on the capital they need. We lend them the money and let them get on with running the business,” says Jesús Olmos, KKR’s representative in Madrid. In April, KKR lent 320 million euros to construction materials manufacturer Uralita over a seven-year period, and it has also taken positions in parking lot firm Saba and helicopter maker Inaer.

In 2008 Juan Vizcaíno, once of Lehman Brothers, set up Hipoges, which specializes in managing distressed assets. He now employs around 80 people in Madrid, and already manages assets valued at 2.3 billion euros, most of them in the form of property and bought at knock-down prices from the banks. “Most of the property we buy is new and hasn’t even been lived in. It was bought as an investment by people who have now gone abroad,” he says.

Vizcaíno says the toxic assets business has grown so fast that he has had to move office twice as he takes on new staff to keep up with demand. His current offices occupy more than 1,000 square meters in downtown Madrid: “We are spectacularly busy. Interest in Spain has multiplied tenfold,” he says.

In August, the owners of Mexican fund Fibra Uno bought more than 900 offices that had originally belonged to Banco Sabadell, which the bank had sold to a US fund for 300 million euros. The Catalan regional government sold 13 buildings to French company AXA for 172 million euros in a deal that sees the government pay rent on them. With a profit rate of 9.45 percent, in just under a decade AXA will have recouped its investment in rent alone.

Meanwhile, the Popular Party-controlled regional government of Madrid is busy selling off chunks of housing stock built for low-income families. On June 24, Madrid’s Municipal Housing and Property Company (EMVS) said that it had sold 1,860 low-rent apartments to Blackstone, an associate of Spanish property developer Magic Real Estate, for 128.5 million euros. Blackstone is one of the world’s largest investment funds, with assets of 60 billion dollars.

The purchase looks like a classic vulture fund move: buying where nobody else dared to strip the assets and sell as soon as possible. “Blackstone knows that 85 percent of property in Spain is privately owned, with just 15 percent rented out. The average in Europe is 70/30. Eventually Spain will get to that point. If the figure shifts from 15 percent to 25 percent, that is 2.7 million properties that will enter the rental market. In Germany, Blackstone has 50,000 properties for rent, but until now, there weren’t enough properties available for it to be worth buying in Spain,” says a source close to the operation.

Blackstone is obliged to continue the low-rental policy for a decade, during which time it will operate a zero-tolerance policy toward tenants who fall behind with payments, and after which it can rent them out at higher prices. Most of the properties are in the working-class district of Carabanchel, in the southwest of the city. Speaking to tenants in one block that has been sold off, it is clear most have no idea who the new owners of their homes are. One man says he has stopped paying his rent because he no longer knows who to make the transfer to. Average rents here are around 200 euros a month for a three-bedroom apartment. Many homes have never been occupied.

In August, the Madrid Housing Institute (Ivima), also set up to provide low-cost housing, sold 2,935 low-rent apartments in the working-class dormitory town of Parla to Goldman Sachs and Azora for 201.2 million euros. Azora already manages some 7,000 of these properties slated for social housing, along with student residences and hotels, all valued at 1.3 billion. Fernando Gumuzio, the company’s founder, says the firm charges rents of between 250 and 600 euros.

Gumuzio rejects the idea that companies like his are vultures circling the moribund carcass of the Spanish economy: “I prefer to call them opportunists. They are investing in problem companies, and helping to clean up their debts. This is the first step toward recovery. Later on, the institutional funds will move in.”

Rafael Powley of US consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle explains that investment funds are awash with cash after taking advantage of the collapse of the US property market and its subsequent recovery. “There are a lot of people who made a lot of money buying cheap, and want to repeat their success here.”

The figures suggest that property prices in Spain may well be bottoming out. The price per square meter for office space on the Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid’s upscale central thoroughfare, has been stable for a year now. At the height of the property boom, prices were 13,000 euros per square meter; the rate is around 6,500 euros. “The speculative market is always ahead of the real economy: that’s how you make money,” says Juan Manuel Ortega, who heads Jones Lang LaSalle’s operations in Spain. He says that three years ago, most of the firm’s clients were looking for advice on how to get out of Spain; “now they want us to tell them what to buy.”

Powley explains that most of those rushing to buy now are the same companies that inflated the property bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s: “In those days, a developer would call you to say that he had sacked his sales team because they had sold his property so quickly that he hadn’t been able to put the prices up.”

Ismael Clemente hails from a tiny community in the western province of Badajoz and has many years of experience in the property business. Before setting up Magic Real Estate, he headed the property division of Deutsche Bank in Spain. In November 2005, seeing which way the wind was blowing, he advised his bosses to get out of the Spanish property market before selling the Hotel Arts in Barcelona in early 2006. The bank made 170 million euros on the deal, selling the hotel to a Dutch group and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. “We lost 18 months, but we made up for it with that sale,” he says. Magic is now a partner with Blackstone.

Clemente explains some of the key points of Spain’s emerging property market: “Buying a shopping center in Leipzig is barely profitable, and one setback and you are down on the deal. So the idea is to get into other markets. Prices are back up in Dublin, London is enjoying its own particular boom, while France is beginning to look weak. A shopping center in Valladolid is more risky, but twice as profitable if you handle the purchase properly. That’s why the investors are here. People see these funds as pirate ships, but they are playing with other people’s money. Vultures serve a function: they clean up corpses. It’s the same here: they pump money into a market starved of funds.”

He says that Blackstone’s entry into the Spanish market has sent out a message of confidence: “Investors are like sheep. If things go badly here, these funds can always tell their investors that everybody else was here, and nobody could see what was going to happen.”

Some funds have already set aside fixed amounts to invest in Spain. “A client called me a couple of days ago saying he had 500 million euros to spend in Spain,” says Iñigo de Luisa, a partner at law firm Cuatrecasas. “This summer we have seen a lot of activity: I haven’t seen anything like it since the boom.” De Luisa specializes in buying debt, and advised the Bermudas project that saw Sareb sell 245 million euros in loans owed by Grupo Colonial to Burlington Loan Management. The mechanics of these operations is not rocket science: if a company owes 100, the funds buy the loan for 70, or much less, dependent on the risk. If they get the money back they have won; if not, they keep the property portfolio, which is worth more than the 70 they put up.

The party has barely started. Spain’s banks have huge numbers of apartments that sooner or later they must sell. The vulture funds have taken the first step by taking over the property divisions of Bankia (bought by Catalana Bank and Cerberus, a company partly owned by the son of former Prime Minister José María Aznar, whose government in the late 1990s oversaw the property boom). Meanwhile, La Caixa is negotiating the sale of 51 percent of Servihabitat to the Texas Pacific Group.

The country’s regional administrations are also keen to sell off their property assets, often at fire-sale prices, in a bid to generate desperately needed cash. Andalusia, Catalonia, and Valencia were the first to begin offloading publicly owned property: in total some 144 buildings that they hope will raise around 2.2 billion euros.

British investment company Moor Park, which is tied to risk fund Och Ziff, offered the Catalan regional government 450 million euros for 26 buildings it would then rent out to it. The offer was tempting, but the regional government eventually decided that the conditions were not up to scratch. The buyers wanted to be paid in dollars or Swiss francs. “At the height of the euro crisis, what sort of message would that have sent out?” say sources close to the Catalan government.

Murcia has put the seat of the regional government up for sale; Extremadura is also keen to reduce the size of its property portfolio; Asturias is looking for a buyer for its offices in Madrid and Brussels; the Canary Islands has palaces for sale; and Castilla-La Mancha has so far not found a buyer for 16 government buildings. But a consultant who has acted as an intermediary in the sale of government buildings to foreign investment groups says that only Madrid and Barcelona have any appeal. The regional government of Madrid has already put 11 buildings up for auction this year with a starting price of 32 million euros. But for Madrid City Hall, it was only after dropping the price by 40 percent that it managed to sell its environment department’s offices for 21.8 million euros to the Bank of China. The Valencian regional government says that it is in advanced talks to sell three buildings.

More and more properties owned by regional and municipal governments are expected to come onto the market in the coming months. The central government has so far only raised 90 million euros since 2012 from selling off its property portfolio, but now says that it is to put more than 15,000 properties on the market, among them 61 apartment blocks, almost 7,000 houses, and 800 stores. No price has been agreed, say sources at the Economy Ministry.

This macro-sale includes some attractive assets, as well as many that will prove tricky to dispose of. For example, the former headquarters of the National Stock Exchange Commission on the Castellana, valued at 30 million euros; the building formerly occupied by the RTVE state-owned radio and television company, just round the corner, along with properties in other upscale areas of the capital. The government even wants to sell 14,000 hectares of the Alcornocales natural park in Cádiz, offering permission to the buyer to build an aerodrome, two golf courses and a luxury hotel. As Spain goes on sale, nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility.

Investors in search of bargains.

KKR, Centerbridge, Cerberus, Lone Star, Apollo, Blackstone, Colony Capital or Green Oak. Their names sound more and more often in Spain, as the list of international funds interested in finding a real estate bargain continues growing. The traditional Spanish venture capital is out of the equation, not only due to lack of cash, but also because of the legal limitations to invest in this kind of assets. Only certain firms, such as Atitlan, from the Roig family, or Altamar have the possibilities of participating in the real estate sector.

These great funds have nearly 13.000 million Euros to invest in Spain and a great part of this capital is for the real estate sector that is now considered a priority. Nevertheless, the search for assets is very specific.”The foreign investors focus on a liquid and good quality product, preferably in rent; the search for high profits implies important discounts, which reduces the volume of operations”, Jesús Conde, partner in the real estate department at Baker & McKenzie.

The operations in the sector depend on the market of each asset. In the residential one, “the foreign funds are waiting for Sareb to organize and package the portfolio of the nationalized banks, so as to offer then a very reduced price for a set of assets with a similar level of liquidity and risk, with discounts of up to 90% of the original valuation”, Eduard Saura, managing partner of the financial assessment company Accuracy, explains.  In his opinion, the Anglo Saxon opportunistic funds are the ones keeping an eye on these assets.

This expert considers there is less interest on the segment of shopping malls. However there are still operations. For example, the bid organized by Morgan Stanley for the three malls that its fund Msref has in Spain was attended by many funds that are not present in the country. Only foreign funds have reached the final stage: Bau Post, Drago Capital and the one that is best positioned, Incus Capital.

At the end of the year, another foreign investor made its debut in Spain: the North American Autonomy, which acquired two buildings in the business park Omega, in Alcobendas (Madrid). In Barcelona, other funds, this time European ones, Värde and Anchorage, took part in the Operation Copernico, with the acquisition of five buildings in the centre of the Catalan capital and in Madrid for around 100 million Euros.

If the first ones to arrive to Spain were the Anglo Saxon funds, in the last few months other funds with a Latin American origin, have arrived to the market with a lot of liquidity. “Up to now, the Latin American capital fled the volatility of its countries and bet on the United States to invest. Now they are searching in Spain”, Francisco Machón, in charge of Investments of BNP Paribas Real Estate, assures. One example is the tycoon Carlos Slim, who acquired six months ago properties from CaixaBank for more than 400 million Euros, or the acquisition of a building in Recoletos street, closed last week, by a Latin American family.

“The investors are much more active, although they search for an adjustment in prices in view of the uncertainty of the awaited flow of cash for the next three years”, Javier García-Mateo, in charge of Real Estate at Deloitte, declares.

Source: Expansión