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21 November 2017 – Expansión
The firm Onix Capital, in which several wealthy South American families own a stake, has reached an agreement with the former owners of the company to purchase the building, located on Avenida de Manoteras in Madrid.
Another office building in Madrid has changed hands. In this case, the star is a property located on Avenida de Manoteras, in the north of the capital, which, until just a few days ago, was home to the corporate headquarters of Páginas Amarillas (the Yellow Pages) in Spain.
The building used to be owned by the fund Hibu Connect, which sold the company that created the famous yellow coloured telephone directory in May (it now specialises in advising SMEs) to the firms Metric Capital Partners and Evolvere Capital. Following that corporate operation, the owners held onto the property, but they have sold it to a new owner six months on.
The architect of the purchase has been the firm Onix Capital Partners. “We are a group specialising in the real estate sector, with 30 years of experience in Argentina”, explained Martín Kielmanowicz, Vice-President of Onix Capital Partners. Our investors are Latin American families, above all from Argentina, and institutional groups (…).
In fact, the Páginas Amarillas building is the third purchase that this group of investors has made in Spain. Its first operation involved the acquisition of Edificio Montepríncipe, located next to Santander’s Ciudad Financiera, in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid). For that property, which is leased to the financial institution to house its IT services, Onix paid almost €80 million. Last year, the investor group also reached an agreement with Allegra Holding, the investment arm of the Losantos family, to purchase HP’s headquarters in Las Rozas.
“At the beginning, we focused on core properties, with long-term lease contracts and good tenants but, with such intense competition for those kinds of assets, we have now branched out to look at new options”, explained Kielmanowicz.
In this way, the Páginas Amarillas building appeared on the firm’s radar. It is one of the most well-recognised properties in the area thanks to its original design. Its surface area spans 12,000 m2 and it has 200 parking spaces. “The property is currently spread over five floors, but following the renovation, we hope to increase the height and extend the space to 13,000 m2”, said the Vice-President of Onix.
Following the completion of the purchase last week, the employees of Páginas Amarillas have now left the property, which will be renovated in its entirety to attract a new tenant. To this end, the Argentinian manager has engaged the architecture studio B720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, which will take care of the complete refit of the building (…).
The renovation of the property will begin before the end of the year, with the aim of putting it on the market at the beginning of 2019. Onix will invest €35 million in total on the purchase and the renovation (…). “Behind the investment are five Latin American families and the Onix management team also holds a percentage stake”, he added.
The firms JLL, Knight Frank, Baker Mckenzie and Uría Menéndez have all participated as advisors to the operation.
Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)
Translation: Carmel Drake