Moody’s: Popular Cannot Afford To Wait To Clean Up Its BS

29 May 2017 – Expansión

The credit rating agency Moody’s considers that Banco Popular does not have time to wait for the recovery in the real estate sector in Spain to have a positive impact on the quality of the real estate assets in its portfolio.

In fact, the rating agency considers that Popular’s solvency problems mean that it must reduce the non-performing assets that are weighing down on its balance sheet in an “accelerated” way, without allowing the entity to fully benefit from the reactivation of the real estate market.

“The recovery in the real estate market is a positive factor for the banks that are most exposed to the real estate sector”, said María Viñuela, Deputy Vice-President and analyst at Moody’s.

Nevertheless, Viñuela understands that the recovery in the housing market will materialise “over time”, which is why she reiterates that Popular is “under pressure” to improve its solvency and accelerate the reduction of its non-performing assets within a “shorter” time frame.

The entity chaired by Emilio Saracho (pictured above), whose rating Moody’s downgraded to B1 in April, has non-performing assets amounting to €37,000 million – 25% of the total – on its balance sheet, most of which are related to the real estate sector, which is one of the major factors that impinges on its value in a possible corporate operation.

The bank, which is currently analysing all of the strategic options open to it, still has more than two weeks to decide whether to go ahead with the sales process in which it has been immersed since 16 May, given that a deadline of 10 June has been set for taking a decision.

For the time being, Popular has not received any specific firm offers, nor has it assumed any commitments, which means that it has not completely ruled out a capital increase, as Saracho stated during the most recent General Shareholders’ Meeting.

Amongst Popular’s strengths that may attract its buyers include its franchise and its SME business, where the entity is the leader of the sector, with a market share of almost 18%.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone Puts €400M Of Catalunya Banc’s Mortgages Up For Sale

27 March 2017 – Expansión

The banks have put a red circle around 2017 in their calendars, as the year when the doubtful portfolios that have hurt them so hard in the past and that are still denting their balance sheets even now, will show signs of life. Some of the entities may end up generating more profits than they initially expected.

And Blackstone is leading the way. The US giant has created a securitisation fund containing some of the non-performing loans with a nominal value of €6,000 million that it purchased from Catalunya Banc in 2015 for almost €3,600 million. Two years later, and after restructuring many of the credits, the investment group has decided that the time has come to capitalise on its investment.

It will do so with the sale to investors of a portfolio containing €403 million of these formerly delinquent loans. It represents Blackstone’s second foray into this field. Last year, the firm opened fire with the first securitisation of structured loans in Europe, although now it is redoubling its efforts given that the volume up for sale is 52% higher.

The fund comprises 3,307 residential mortgages granted in Spain, with a loan to value (credit over the value of the home) of 60.9%. Almost 80% of these mortgages have been restructured and many of the borrowers are up to date with their repayments. Meanwhile, there has been no change to the rest, according to information that Blackstone has provided to Moody’s to allow the risk ratings agency to make its assessment.

Profits

Blackstone’s aim is to sell this portfolio to investors in order to materialise some of the gains obtained from the management of the non-performing loans. In all likelihood, the securitisation fund will be placed below its nominal value, but at a much higher level than Blackstone paid when it acquired the mortgages from Catalunya Banc, before the State intervened entity was acquired by BBVA.

In exchange, Blackstone will offer different coupons to investors, depending on the type of mortgages that they take on.

The fund has been divided into five tranches, depending on the risk. The first has a very high level of solvency and so will pay annual interest of 3-month Euribor plus a spread of 0.90%.

The second and third tranches, which still have high or intermediate solvency ratings, will pay premiums over Euribor of 1.9% and 2.5%, respectively. The fourth tranche is ranked below investment grade and will pay a return of 2.6%.

The objective of Blackstone and the three banks that it has engaged for the securitisation (Credit Suisse, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank) is that the operation will be completed next week.

A new market

This second securitisation by Blackstone is clear confirmation that a new market has opened up for buyers of delinquent portfolios from the banks. In fact, sources from several investment banks are confident that there will be a significant volume of secondary operations of this kind this year, where the new owners of the bank’s non-performing loans will sell their positions to other funds and to the market alike, through securitisations. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Inés Abril)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Hispania Gets Ready To Debut On The Bond Market

17 January 2017 – Cinco Días

The Socimi Hispania is planning to join the bond issues undertaken in recent months by other major players in the sector, including Merlin and Colonial, with the aim of diversifying its financing. To this end, it has already started to sound out the ratings agencies. Its objective is to obtain an investment grade rating for its securities.

Hispania Activos Inmobiliarios is studying the option of debuting on the capital markets with a bond issue to refinance some of its gross debt, which currently amounts to €631 million, according to sources familiar with the operation.

The Socimi has already started the process to request a rating from the ratings agencies, with the aim of launching the operation during the first few months of the year.

The firm has made contact with the three large players –Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch–, although it will not need a rating from all of them, rather from just one of them or two at most. The aim is to achieve an investment grade rating – BBB – or Baa3 – , which would allow it to debut on the capital markets at a reasonable cost.

Hispania, in which the magnate George Soros owns a 16% stake, will thereby join the other bond issues undertaken recently by other companies in the sector.

The Socimi Merlin Properties – which forms part of the Ibex 35 – went to the market in October with a 10-year bond placement amounting to €800 million. The current yield on that debt is 2.3%. It has a Baa2 rating, which is one notch above the limit that separates junk bonds from investment grade securities, according to Moody’s nomenclature. Moreover, Merlin has assumed another €1,550 million in bonds from two bond issues made by Metrovacesa, with which it completed its merger at the end of October. (…).

Hispania’s current debt has an average maturity period of 7.2 years and €497 million of the balance is due to be repaid from 2022 onwards. The current average debt cost is 2.7%. Hispania also has hedges in place to avoid any surprises if interest rates rise. 96% of its debt is guaranteed. (…).

In general terms, the optimal balance sheet structure of these types of companies rests on three pillars: bank debt with an additional guarantee – in the majority of cases, properties from the company’s portfolio – , unsecured financial loans and listed debt.

With the proceeds that it raises from the bond issue, Hispania plans to repay some of its current debt balance. It would thereby take advantage of the good conditions in the market with liquidity and the environment of low interest rates. This company, created in 2014 under the special tax regime for Socimis, is led by Concha Osácar and Fernando Gumuzio, and is managed by Azora. In addition to Soros, its shareholders include the funds Fidelity, FMR, Tamerlane and BlackRock.

Hotel specialist

Hispania’s portfolio of real estate assets closed the third quarter of 2016 with an appraisal value of €1,680 million. The Socimi owns 36 hotels in Spain with 10,407 rooms. 68% of the value of those assets is located in the Canary Islands and 64% is managed by Barceló, with which it has signed a strategic alliance. The Socimi recently purchased three properties in the Cala San Miguel in Ibiza (pictured above) for €32 million.

Original story: Cinco Días (by A. Simón and R.M. Simón)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Banks Recover But Its Toxic Assets Remain

9 January 2017 – Tribune

Hit by a severe crisis several years ago, Spain’s banking sector has recovered but at a cost as thousands are laid off and it struggles to get rid of toxic assets.

“The system is closer to putting most of the crisis legacies behind it,” said analysts at the International Monetary Fund in charge of Spain in a recent report. Still, the ghosts of a crisis that saw the European Union bail out the sector have recently been revived as Italy suffers a similar predicament, with the State having to rescue Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank.

The EU lent €41 billion ($43 billion) to rescue the Spanish banking sector in the spring of 2012, compared to some €50 billion in Greece, as an example.

At the time, Spain was waist-deep in a financial crisis caused when a property bubble burst in 2008, after years of euphoria that saw loans granted almost blindly to households incapable of reimbursing them.

Since then, though, the share of problem loans on the balance sheets of Spain’s banks has dropped considerably.

In the second quarter of 2016, it stood at an average of 6%, according to the European Banking Authority (EBA) regulatory agency. This is slightly above the European median of 5.4%, but well below that of Italy, Portugal or Greece, which stand at 16.4%, 20% and 47% respectively.

Spain’s central bank, which is even stricter in its calculations of the share of bad loans, said in November that it stood at an average of 9.2%, against a high of 13.6% at the end of 2013. The Moody’s ratings agency predicts this should continue to drop thanks to “favourable macroeconomic conditions” such as expected growth of 3.2% in 2016, double the eurozone average.

Banks are also much stricter in granting loans now.

But on a darker note, they are struggling to sell the huge amount of property seized during the crisis from households that could not pay, as buyers remain scarce.

“Despite the mild recovery in the housing market observed in 2015, banks’ real estate repossessions continue to exceed the volume of properties that banks are managing to sell,” said Moody’s in a note.

Original story: Tribune

Edited by: Carmel Drake

Moody’s Warns Of Higher Default Risk For Restructured Mortgages

11 November 2016 – Expansión

Yesterday, the ratings agency Moody’s issued a warning about mortgages that are being restructured, which represents an increasingly larger pool, thanks to the economic recovery and the proliferation of real estate management platforms. In the entity’s opinion, several variables may lead to an increase in the risk profile of these assets. Specifically, restructured mortgages are more risky when: the mortgage term is extended; grace periods are granted for the payment of interest or the repayment of the principal; interest charges are reduced; and other modifications are made.

This warning comes just a few weeks after Blackstone created the first securitisation fund in Europe containing restructured loans, amounting to €265 million. It created the fund using mortgages that it purchased from Catalunya Banc at the beginning of 2015. Nevertheless, it only included loans that borrowers have been repaying normally, without any help, for more than 37 months.

Analysts at Moody’s consider that foreign residents in Spain are twice as likely to default on their loans than Spaniards. “A defaulted payment by a foreigner on a Spanish loan does not have any impact on his credit history in his country of origin; and clearly, that reduces the incentive for him to seek solutions to repay his debt”, say the experts. In turn, the risk of default is 30% higher for borrowers who have restructured mortgages over secondary residences compared with those who have restructured mortgages over primary residences.

Moody’s has also conducted analysis by geographic region and in this sense, its results are clear: borrowers who have restructured mortgages for homes on the coast are almost twice as likely to default than borrowers with restructured mortgages in Madrid.

The default rate

Meanwhile, Axesor forecasts that the default rate for loans to families and companies will close the year at 8.96%, which would bring it below the 9% threshold for the first time since May 2012. The balance of doubtful debts amounted to €116,613 million in August, which represented a YoY decrease of 17.58%, and that figure is expected to continue to fall at a double-digit pace, which means that we could close the year with a doubtful debt balance of around €110,051 million.

Original story: Expansión (by D.B.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Moody’s Assigns Merlin An Investment Grade Rating

19 October 2016 – Expansión

The ratings agency Moody’s has granted Merlin a Baa2 rating, in other words, investment grade. The agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) also assigned the Socimi’s debt an investment grade rating in February. Merlin is just a few days away from closing its merger with Metrovacesa, which will result in the creation of the largest real estate asset company in Spain.

This rating represents a boost for Merlin’s plans to return to the capital markets soon with a new bond issue. It placed bonds amounting to €850 million in April.

With this rating from Moody’s, the Socimi has become the highest rated Spanish real estate company. The agency highlighted the position of leadership that the Socimi will have in the Spanish market following its merger with Metrovacesa, as well as the diversity of its assets.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Moody’s: Spain’s Banks May Securitise €105,000M Of Problem Assets

5 October 2016 – Expansión

Moody’s Forecast / The US giant Blackstone has opened an alternative route for Spanish entities to accelerate the clean up of their balance sheets, through the placement of securitisation funds containing restructured credits.

This week will see the placement of the first securitised fund of problem mortgages on the market in Europe by Blackstone, in a move that is set to pave the way for Spain’s banks to replicate the model. Blackstone’s plans involve the sale of some of the assets (€265 million) that it bought from Catalunya Banc in 2015, for a nominal value of more than €6,000 million.

The ratings agency Moody’s estimates that Spain’s banks have €105,000 million in refinanced or restructured problem loans in total, primarily mortgages, which may be put on the market through securitised funds. “The banks are under pressure from the ECB to reduce this load as quickly as possible, to clean up their balance sheets and improve their returns”, said Moody’s in a recent report. According to PwC, half of the problem loans in Europe are held by borrowers in Italy, Spain and Ireland.

Assets susceptible to being securitised are those that have been modified to help the borrower pay, although they do not necessarily need to have been in arrears in the past. The original loan may have been refinanced (offering a new loan to repay the existing one) and/or restructured (changing the terms and conditions). This figure is lower than the total volume of overdue loans owing to Spain’s banks, which amount to €138,000 million and foreclosed properties (€113,000 million).

For example, in its securitised fund, Blackstone has included only those loans that have been performing (being repaid) for more than 37 months in a row, therefore, they are considered to be “high quality” problem assets. In exchange, they offer an attractive yield, more than 100 basis points above Euribor, with a discount of just 10% for those funds prepared to bear the most risk.

In order to open up this market, players have worked hard to obtain support for these types of securitisations from the regulators. Both the ECB, as well as the Bank of England and the European Banking Authority have been working to create specific pan-European regulations to facilitate more simple, transparent and standard securitisations, pending approval from the European Parliament. According to Moody’s, securitisations of refinanced and restructured credits would fall within this definition, which should facilitate their placement amongst investors.

Investors

The most active buyers of these types of problem asset portfolios in Europe may now also participate as investors in this market. According to data from Deloitte, Oaktree, Lone Star and HSH are the most active purchasers, with more than €5,000 million, followed by others such as Bain Capital, AnaCap and Apollo.

Until now, many of the portfolios sold by the banks to these funds have been transacted through bilateral operations. Nevertheless, the economic recovery means that the volume of refinanced loans that are now performing (being repaid) is increasing, which means that the sector could generate higher returns from these kinds of securitisations.

Original story: Expansión (by Daniel Badía)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Banks Still Own €350,000M Of Toxic Assets

26 September 2016 – Expansión

Spain’s banks still have €350,000 million of problem assets on their balance sheets, which they must get rid of if they want to tackle another major problem that they are now facing: their lack of profitability. Most of them have already strengthened their capital to comply with the regulatory obligations demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB).

However, according to data compiled by the ratings agency Moody’s, based on statistics from the European Banking Authority and the Bank of Spain, the burst of the real estate bubble in 2008 and the subsequent financial crisis have left non-performing loans, properties and deferred loans, with a total value equivalent to one third of Spain’s GDP, on the entities’ balance sheets.

Approximately €140,000 million of the total €350,000 million accumulated on the balance sheets of the entities corresponds to non-performing loans or NPLs, whilst the rest is divided between assets such as property developments and land owned by the banks and loans whose recovery has been postponed because the borrowers have not been able to afford the repayments.

As a whole, this burden is reducing the banks’ ability to handle their other great problem: monetary policy at zero-interest rates. Between January and June 2016, the revenues of the banks listed on the stock market which decreased by 1.3%.

In order to resolve this problem, the large entities are having to resort to the market to get rid of their bad loans, albeit with average discounts of 30% on their original values. Various alternatives are being explored to this end, including the structure being prepared by entities such as Banco Popular, which will debut a subsidiary on the stock exchange containing up to €6,000 million of toxic assets. Other entities are packaging up and selling loans and properties to funds that specialise in their management. According to the consultancy firm Deloitte, Spain’s financial entities currently have problem assets worth €20,000 million up for sale.

The analysts at Moody’s consider that the rate of reduction in the non-performing loan balances of Spanish banks is clear for all to see. “But it is not as visible in terms of the volume of foreclosed properties or deferred loans, which are still classified as performing”, explain María Cabanyes and Alberto Postigo, analysts at the ratings agency. They consider that it is essential that these latter loan categories be included within the “problem” loan balance so as not to hide any of the risks.

Moody’s, which estimates that Spain’s banks have deferred loans amounting to around €100,000 million, highlights that on the basis of the transparency exercises performed by the European Banking Authority, Spain is one of the banking systems that is most exposed to the problems of toxic assets. (…).

For this reason, from 1 October 2016, a new calculation method for recognising provisions against these assets will come into force, imposed by the Bank of Spain. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Daniel Viaña)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Moody’s: House Prices In Spain Will Rise By 5% In 2016

1 July 2016 – La Nueva España

The credit ratings agency Moody’s has forecast that house prices in Spain will increase by 5% in 2016 as a result of the recovery currently underway in the real estate sector, which is being driven, in turn, by improving economic conditions and the lowest mortgage rates since 2011.

The ratings agency explained that the low mortgage rates are due to increased competition within the banking sector and the historically low interest rates set by the European Central Bank (ECB). Euribor, the reference interest rate for mortgages, stood at -0.013% at the end of May.

In this way, Moody’s said that the number of mortgage delinquencies will continue to decline. At the end of December, the rate of mortgage defaults fell below 4.8%, at a time when the average mortgage rate in April stood at 2.03%, its minimum level since 2012.

Nevertheless, the agency explained that the performance and future of the Spanish real estate market will be ”limited” by external economic risks, given the “significant” level of real estate assets that the banks still hold in their portfolios.

“The banks should accelerate the sale of these assets to avoid the risk of oversupply reducing prices in the medium to long-term”, explained the Vice-President of Moody’s, Greg Davies.

Original story: La Nueva España

Translation: Carmel Drake

INE: 23,607 New Mortgages Were Granted In April

30 June 2016 – El Economista

Residential mortgages recorded strong growth once again in April, providing further proof that the recovery is well underway in the real estate sector in Spain, where prices are rising once again in the major cities. Forecasts indicate that 300,000 mortgages will be granted in total this year, although it is hard to believe that those figures will ever return to the level seen during the period 2005-2007 of 100,000 mortgages per month

According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 23,607 residential mortgages were recorded in the property registers in Spain in April, up by 24.6% compared with the same month in 2015 and by 2.7% compared to March.

That made it the highest YoY growth rate since August 2008, well above the increase of 14.5% recorded in March. The average residential mortgage in April amounted to €108,354, up by 5.1% compared to a year earlier. (…).

The banks are playing their part

According to Beatriz Toribio, Head of Research at Fotocasa, “Banks are very interested in granting mortgages at the moment and that is boosting the market at a time when prices are stabilising, which is also encouraging transactions”. (…).

The portal Idealista agrees with this view of “normalisation” in the sector, which is being supported by low underlying interest rates in the Eurozone.

Nevertheless, they highlight that the seasonality caused by Easter may be distorting the April figures and that in any case, the mortgage business is continuing to narrow given that more mortgage repayments are being registered still than new loans being granted.

In summary, Fernando Encinar, Head of Research at Idealista, says that “if we continue at this rate of growth, it is very likely that we will close the year with around 300,000 mortgages granted, well above the figure of 245,000 recorded in 2015”.

Despite the improvement, the 23,607 new mortgages granted in April fall well short of the more than 100,000 mortgages that were granted per month, on average, during the period 2005-2007.

Higher growth in Barcelona and Madrid

(…). Nevertheless, the improvement is very uneven and, whilst in the large cities, in particular, in Madrid and Barcelona, prices bottomed out several months ago, in other areas (such as small towns, rural areas and the east coast), the recovery is not being seen yet.

On Wednesday, ST Sociedad de Tasación published a report showing YoY price increases of at least 4% in June in Madrid and Barcelona, the cities that reported the highest increases of all of the provincial capitals.

According to the study, the price increases in Madrid and Barcelona are due, at least in part, to the scarcity of new housing stock. The study concludes that “the increasing trend observed since June 2015 allows us to predict that Barcelona and Madrid are going to act as the drivers of the recovery process for new house prices, albeit at a slow pace”. (…)

Nevertheless, the ratings agency Moody’s warned that the recovery could be “limited by various uncertainties and risks”, including the abundant stock of homes that the banks still own and the uncertainties regarding the formation of a government in Spain following the second round of general elections on 26 June. (…).

Original story: El Economista

Translation: Carmel Drake