Grupo Ortiz Puts its Socimi up for Sale with Assets Worth €150M

27 November 2017 – El Independiente

The Carpintero family, the majority shareholder of the Socimi Grupo Ortiz Properties, has put the company up for sale, just four months after it started trading on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB). The sales prospectus has been in the offices of potential interested parties for several days now, according to intel gathered by El Independiente.

The company, which has real estate assets worth more than €150 million and a capitalisation of €74 million, owns 100,000 m2 of space for rent, with a 96% occupancy rate.

Most of the assets, equivalent to 97% of their value, are located in Madrid, and they generate aggregate net rental income of €6.9 million. The residual part of the portfolio is located in Asturias and Guadalajara.

The intention of the Carpintero family is to continue as a shareholder of the company, by holding onto around 30% of the share capital.

The company is led by Juan Antonio Carpintero (pictured above), President of Grupo Ortiz and Chairman of the Socimi’s Board of Directors, alongside his children María and Carlos Carpintero, Raúl Arce as the CEO of the construction company and Carlos Cuervo-Arango Martínez, a former director of Zeltia.

According to the company’s own reports, the market value of the assets owned by Grupo Ortiz Properties amounts to €150 million. Of those, its office buildings account for €67.1 million; its homes and apartments another €70.7 million; its warehouses €3.6 million; and its other premises and parking spaces €8.7 million.

In the documentation prepared for its debut on the stock market, Grupo Ortiz Properties described the nature of the property sector at the moment. “The real estate market is entering an attractive point in the cycle in light of the improvement being seen in the main macroeconomic indicators, such as consumer confidence, employment, interest rates, exports/imports, the industrial production index, the reactivation of the second-hand residential market – they are all signs of the economic recovery and of the start of a change in the cycle”.

The Socimi highlights that its “management strategy is based on long-term leases to solvent tenants (both economically and professionally) in order to ensure long-term sustainability and the ability to obtain an attractive return in exchange for the risk assumed”.

Original story: El Independiente (by Ana Antón)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Socimi Jaba acquires new Office Building in Santander For €5M

27 November 2017 – Eje Prime

The Socimi business is seducing investors from all over the world. Such is the case of Jaba, constituted with Jordanian capital, which is continuing to add assets to its portfolio. On this occasion, the company has purchased an office building in Santander, Cantabria, for €5 million, according to sources at the company, speaking to Eje Prime. Since the Socimi has been operating, its shareholders have invested €30 million in the purchase of assets.

Jaba formalised the purchase of this new asset on 8 November. Located in the ‘Parque Científico y Tecnológico de Cantabria’ (Cantabria’s Science and Technology Park), the building has required an investment of €4.95 million and has a surface area of 3,800 m2. The property also has 57 parking spaces.

According to the group, the asset is leased in its entirety to the international group Louis Berger, which specialises in the provision of global professional services and which is one of the leading engineering companies in the world. The financing has been obtained in the form of a mortgage loan with Banco Santander.

As part of the same act, the company also proceeded to refinance a mortgage loan on one of its buildings, located at number 37 on Calle María de Molina in Madrid, for €4.18 million. The new financing, which includes a mortgage guarantee over the building acquired in Santander and the aforementioned building in Madrid, where Jaba has its head offices, amounts to €7.1 million in total and is due to mature in November 2032.

The Socimi Jaba I Inversiones Inmobiliarias debuted on the MAB on 15 April 2016 with the aim of “raising own funds for the future growth of the company through the incorporation of new investors, and to place itself in a competitive position in the market to continue acquiring new assets”.

The company, which was constituted in 2014 to acquire unique real estate assets in the Spanish market, owns a real estate portfolio comprising properties in Madrid and Barcelona. Currently, the shareholders of the company are a family group from Jordan with extensive business experience in various countries in Europe and the Middle East.

Its assets include three office buildings located in the Spanish capital. The first is located at number 37 Calle María de Molina, which has a surface area of 1,753 m2 and which was acquired by the group in September 2013. It also owns another office building at number 125 Calle Arturo Soria, measuring 5,526 m2, and another one at number 27 Calle Sepúlveda in Alcobendas (Madrid), with a surface area of 9,950 m2.

In the Catalan capital, Jaba also operates an office building located in Cornellá de Llobregat (Barcelona), at number 147 Carretera Hospitalet, which has a surface area of 5,828 m2 (…).

In July, the Socimi proposed a capital increase to its shareholders to allow it to fatten up its asset portfolio. The majority of the real estate company’s shareholders voted in favour of the €13.4 million capital injection (…).

The Socimi Jaba’s next General Shareholders’ Meeting will take place on 1 December at the group’s corporate headquarters (…). At that meeting, the final decision will be taken as to whether the capital increase will be carried out in the end, as well as whether Tawfiq Shaker Khader will resign as the CEO of the company.

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Amancio Ortega Creates RE Subsidiary In Spain With Assets Worth €1,600M+

13 November 2017 – El Confidencial

Pontegadea, the investment vehicle owned by the founder of Inditex, Amancio Ortega (pictured below), has created a real estate subsidiary in Spain to group together its local assets, which have a combined value of more than €1,600 million. The assets include Torre Cepsa, designed by the architect Norman Foster and acquired at the end of 2016 for €490 million and the building at Gran Vía, 32, which is home to one of the largest Primark stores in Europe, and which was purchased at the beginning of 2015 for €400 million.

Specifically, Pontegadea Inmobiliaria, which closed 2016 with real estate assets worth more than €6,700 million, will have a new subsidiary, in the form of Pontegadea España, a company in which Ortega will group together his real estate business in the Spanish market.

Sources close to the deal have explained to Europa Press that Pontegadea Inmobiliaria already has specific companies in many of the countries in which it operates, such as in the USA, France, United Kingdom and Korea, to hold the real estate activity of the textile giant’s founder in each respective territory.

It is about having a “more homogenous” structure in all of the markets in which Pontegadea Inmobiliaria operates (…). In fact, according to the same sources, there was no need to constitute a company for this activity in the Spanish market, given that Pontegadea already had one, Torre Norte Castellana, owner of Torre Cepsa, acquired at the end of last year. As such, it has only had to change the name of that entity to Pontegadea España, and add the leasing of real estate assets in Spain to its activity, according to the Official Gazette of the Mercantile Registry (Borme).

Torre Cepsa, Gran Vía 32 and Torre Picasso

In addition to Torre Cepsa (…) and Gran Vía, 32, Ortega owns several other buildings in Madrid, such as Torre Picasso and the Castella 79 building, which houses the largest Zara store in the world.

The founder and largest shareholder of Inditex has received revenues of €1,256 million this year in the form of dividends from Pontegadea, through the companies Pontegadea Inversiones and Partler (through which he controls a 59.294% stake in Inditex), compared with €1,108 million in 2016.

Ortega closed 2016 with real estate assets worth €6,719 million, which represents €661 million more than a year before, grouped together into his company Pontegadea Inmobiliaira, which has net assets worth €6,485 million, up from the €5,460 million that it held a year earlier. Ortega, who invests some of the dividends he receives from Inditex in the real estate sector, owns the largest real estate company in Spain, focusing on the sale, purchase and rental of large buildings. The firm owns a portfolio of real estate assets, fundamentally comprising non-residential, office buildings located in the centre of large cities in Spain, the United Kingdom, the USA and Asia.

Original story: El Confidencial

Translation: Carmel Drake

Baupost Finalises Purchase Of Luxury Property Developer Levitt

19 October 2017 – Expansión

The luxury real estate construction sector is retaining its shine. One of the property developers that survived the previous cycle, Levitt-Bosch Aymerich, is on the verge of changing hands. A consortium of American investors, led by the fund Baupost Group, is holding exclusive negotiations to purchase the property developer that specialises in luxury homes, which has a market capitalisation around €200 million.

Sources in the sector explained to Expansión that the operation is in the due diligence phase (the assets are being audited) and that, although no agreement has been reached yet, the operation may be closed soon if the negotiations continue.

Baupost will team up with a local operating partner, Alpine Grove, for the operation. The advisors on buyer include PwC and the law firm Garrigues, on the legal side. Meanwhile, Deloitte Legal is the legal advisor on the sell-side.

According to the latest available information from the Mercantile Register, Levitt-Bosch Aymerich’s net equity amounted to €162 million at the end of 2016. The company recorded a turnover of €61 million and an attributable net result of almost €6 million. Besides Baupost, several other US investment funds that are very active in Spain also submitted bids for Levitt. In this way, market sources indicate that Lone Star, Värde and Castlelake all expressed their interest in the company over the last 12 months.

Levitt, founded in 1929, with the construction of a luxury residential development in New York, arrived in Spain in 1971 with the help of José María Bosch Aymerich, who died in 2015.

In 1973, the company undertook its first development on the Monteclaro urbanisation on the outskirts of Madrid. Since then, it has constructed several high-end developments in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as some office complexes.

In this regard, in October 2014, the company sold five office buildings in Madrid to Merlin for €130 million in order to focus on its residential business.

The firm is currently working on some developments in Valdemarín (Aravaca), in one of the most exclusive areas of Madrid as well as on the El Juncal urbanisation in Alcobendas, amongst others.

Shopping fever

If this deal is closed in the end, it will join the fever of property developer sales that has been happening in Spain in recent years. Examples include Lone Star, which purchased Kutxabank’s real estate subsidiary Neinor in 2014 for €930 million. Also, in February, Värde acquired Vía Célere for €90 million and merged it with DosPuntos – the former real estate subsidiary of the SanJosé group -. In addition, that same fund purchased Aelca from Grupo Avintia for €50 million in June 2016.

Meanwhile, Castlelake, which started to back the Spanish housing market back in 2013 with the purchase of land, launched Aedas Homes just a year ago. Other investors are also backing the market through agreements with local groups to build homes, such as the case of Morgan Stanley and Gestilar, and Green Oak and Ibosa, amongst others.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Deutsche Bank Invests €32M On Complete Renovation Of Diagonal Mar

22 September 2017 – Eje Prime

Deutsche Bank is subjecting one of its star assets in Spain to a facelift. The company is going to invest €32 million on the comprehensive renovation of a shopping centre that it purchased last year for €493 million, according to Isabel Bofill, the manager of the complex, speaking to EjePrime (…)

“In accordance with the needs of the market, we have decided to cut the cinema space in half and add an extra 5,000 m2 to retail”, explains Bofill. The complex is already immersed in the construction work and has all of the permits necessary for this new area of the shopping centre to start to take shape.

“It has taken us several years to get to this point, to give the shopping centre a facelift, but Deutsche Bank’s commitment to position Diagonal Mar (in the market) is real”, says Bofill. The first phase of this construction project will involve converting the third floor of the complex, which has been used only for leisure until now, into another floor for retail, together with restaurants and cinemas (…).

Although the decision regarding how many new stores will be created as a result of the construction work has yet to be taken, Bofill says that one of the objectives of this renovation is to respond to the current needs of retail: the megastores. “A shopping centre has to be in constant movement: when an operator disappears, it is not bad, it is simply the end of a phase”.

Bofill was referring to the departure of Fnac from Diagonal Mar, which is due to leave shortly, whereby freeing up 3,900 m2 of space for new players (…).

The comprehensive renovation of Diagonal Mar is expected to be completed by next June. To this end, Deutsche Bank has also committed to carrying out a rebranding of the whole complex and to a general overhaul of the whole centre. “We are going to change the lighting, the floors, the rest areas…we want it to be a completely new commercial thoroughfare”, explains the director.

Perhaps one of the most ambitious proposals at Diagonal Mar, which increased its footfall by 2.5% last year to 17.1 million visitors, is its plan to change the whole façade of the property. “It is old and if we want to project a younger image and appeal to new consumers, we have to make way for a guise that belongs in the 21st century”, explains the director.

Diagonal Mar is currently managed by the real estate consultancy firm CBRE.

Diagonal Mar was designed by Jean-Louis Solal and Robert A.M. Stern and inaugurated in 2001. Located next to the 22@ district in Barcelona, the shopping centre has a gross leasable area of approximately 90,000 m2 and its tenants include brands such as Alcampo, Cinesa, Media Markt, Primark, H&M and the Inditex Group.

Deutsche Bank acquired Diagonal Mar through its real estate arm in Spain, Deutsche Asset Management (Deutsche AM) (…), which has assets under management worth €1,300 million.

The company’s portfolio in the Iberian Peninsula currently comprises 17 real estate assets, specifically: seven shopping centres; seven office buildings; and three logistics assets, with a combined gross leasable area of 420,000 m2 (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Realia Negotiates Sale Of Los Cubos Building For €55M

7 September 2017 – Eje Prime

Realia, the real estate company owned by Carlos Slim, is on the verge of signing a new operation in Madrid. The Mexican magnate’s company is negotiating with Therus Invest to sell the Los Cubos office building for €55 million.

The fund, led by Olivier Crambade, specialises in value-added operations, as well as in the renovation and repositioning of buildings that have already been constructed, according to El Confidencial.

The property has a gross leasable area of 18,324 m2 and 334 parking spaces. The asset, which is completely ready to operate as an office, has been vacant for two years.

Last autumn, Therus completed the sale of Project Helios to the Socimi Hispania. That project comprises office buildings in the Madrilenian district of Campo de las Naciones, for which the group paid €32 million.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Mediapro Puts Its Headquarters up for Sale for 60 Million Euros

 

18 August 2017

It will be one of the largest real estate transactions of the year in Barcelona. The city council that runs Ada Colau and Mediapro has announced the public auction of 100% of the capital of Mediacomplex, the company that owns the Imagina building, which is in the 22@ district and houses the headquarters of the audiovisual group.

The municipal company Bimsa owns 33.3% of Mediacomplex, and Rilson XXI Inmuebles, a real estate company that is a part of the group headed by Jaume Roures, holds 66.7%. The two partners have initiated the joint sale of the company to take advantage of the voracity of Spanish and foreign investors, who are hunting for real estate assets in Barcelona.

The complex, located on 117 Diagonal Avenue, near the Torre Agbar, has 55,000 square meters, divided into two blocks: Mediapro’s audio-visual production building, equipped with film sets and technical facilities, and a 17-storey office tower, Half of them also occupied by the company, and the rest by other tenants.

“It’s a good time to sell,” say sources in Mediapro, as it is considered a “very appealing building.” “We are not a real estate company,” the same sources added, who rule out the possibility that the group would keep any participation in the company.

The search for a buyer for Mediapro’s headquarters in the 22@ district runs parallel to the sale of 51% of the group’s equity to the Chinese company Orient Hontai, with which exclusive negotiations are continuing.

Minimum price

According to auction documents, Bimsa and Rilson are asking for a minimum of 52.63 million euros for the totality of the shares in Mediacomplex. Of this figure, Bimsa would receive €17.52 million, and Rilson would get 35.10 million euros. The statement makes clear that no offers below the minimum price will be accepted.

In practice, however, the €6.05 million that Mediacomplex owes in debt to Rilson must also be included in the company’s cost.

The sale, in which the real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield is advising, expressly excludes the possibility of a separate sale by one of the two partners.

Mediacomplex registered a turnover of €8.80 million last year, of which €6.22 million was rental income.

Original Story: Expansion ProOrbyt – J. Orihuel / D. Casals

Translation: Richard Turner

Hispania Sells Its Portfolio of Offices to Swiss Life

9 August 2017

 

The Ázcarraga 3 building in the Chamartín district (Madrid)

The Spanish REIT, which counts George Soros as an investor, is close to finalizing the sale of about twenty office buildings to focus on its hotel business.

Everything is ready for the sale of Hispania’s portfolio of offices, one of the most anticipated deals in the real estate market. Absent any last-minute hiccups, the Spanish REIT, which counts George Soros as an investor, will sign an agreement with Swiss Life for the sale of some twenty office buildings for about 510 million euros, according to EXPANSIÓN’s sources.

Hispania’s office portfolio is distributed between Madrid, where 16 buildings are located, as well as two offices in two buildings and one asset under development, Barcelona and Málaga, with five and one building each.

The real estate consultants CBRE, JLL and the law firm Freshfields have advised Hispania, while Swiss Life has been advised by Aguirre Newman and Garrigues.  The deal is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks, or even days.

According to the latest information provided by Hispania, the Spanish REIT’s portfolio of offices had a value of 584 million euros at the end of the first semester of 2017. This assessment included the Aurelio Menéndez building, sold in June to a family office for 37.5 million euros. Hispania plans on keeping its commitment to execute pending works on the asset, which it expects to complete in November, at which time the sale of the building will be finalized.

Not including Aurelio Menéndez, Hispania has offices with almost 182,000 square meters of gross leasable area, of which almost 21,300 meters are in Madrid’s financial district. It also has another 116,852 square meters in office buildings in the prime secondary zone. Hispania has 39,506 square meters in Barcelona and 4,288 square meters in Malaga.

According to the latest information published by Hispania, the occupancy level in these buildings is 84%, with an average monthly income of 13.8 euros per square meter.

Hispania acknowledged this morning in a relevant fact to the market that is negotiating the sale of office assets and added that it maintains contacts with, among others, Swiss Life, although it added that it has not yet reached any agreement on the matter.

Divestment

With this operation, the company managed by the Azora Group goes one step further in its strategy to divest itself of residential and office assets to focus on the hotel business, in which it will continue to invest before putting those assets up for sale as well.

In this regard, in February Hispania announced its intention to continue with its initial objective of selling all its assets, individually, in portfolios or through a sale or change of control in the company, before March 2020, six years after the company was floated. Under this strategy, shareholders decided to extend the investment period until 31 December.

In addition to George Soros, who controls 16.7% of the REIT through Soros Fund Management, Fidelity Management and Research (7%), Tamerlane (6%), BW Gestão de Investimentos (3,6%), BlackRock (3.3%) and AXA Investments (3%) are also investors.

Original Story: Expansion – R. Arroyo / S. Saiz

Translation: Richard Turner

Hispania Finalises Sale Of Its Office Portfolio To Swiss Life

24 July 2017 – Expansión

Hispania is stepping on the accelerator in its divestment process and is pushing ahead with negotiations to close the sale of its office portfolio. The Socimi in which the multi-millionaire George Soros holds a stake is negotiating exclusively with Swiss Life regarding the sale of more than twenty buildings for a price that will amount to approximately €500 million.

In the final stretch of the process, Swiss Life has fought off the other candidates, including Starwood Capital, and has positioned itself as the favourite to acquire this portfolio, which includes 24 office buildings in Madrid, Barcelona and Málaga, according to market sources.

The operation, which is currently in the due diligence phase, forms part of its asset divestment strategy, prior to its liquidation, which the real estate firm managed by Azora began in June.

The process

Sources at Hispania consulted in this regard say that the operation “is not closed and that the asset sales process is still on-going”.

Hispania’s portfolio includes 24 assets, with a gross leasable area of around 150,000 m2. At the end of the first quarter, Hispania’s office portfolio was worth €526 million.

Hispania closed its first quarter of the year in the office segment with an average rental income of €13.8/m2/month, which represents an increase of 7% compared to the first quarter of 2016. During the first quarter of 2017, the company signed new contracts for 5,085m2 of space, which allowed it to increase its occupancy rate to 82%.

Hispania, which was created in 2014, is scheduled to be sold in March 2020, when it celebrates its sixth anniversary since debuting on the stock market.

As part of this strategy, Hispania announced in June the sale of the Aurelio Menéndez office building, located on the Madrilenian Calle Suero de Quiñones.

That building, which has a gross leasable area (GLA) of more than 4,700 m2, was sold to a family office for €37.5 million, which represents a price of €7,800/m2.

Hispania’s total office portfolio includes 18 buildings in Madrid – representing 75% of the total – and a plot of land to be developed. Notable properties include Edificio Torre 30 – previously known as the NCR Building – located on Calle Albacete, which is leased to Grupo Ilunion and which has a gross leasable area of 11,417 m2. Moreover, the company owns the Cristalia Play building (pictured above), located in the Campo de las Naciones area of the city; the Foster Wheeler building, located in Las Rozas; and the Murano building, on Calle Emilio Vargas.

In addition, the company owns five properties in Barcelona and another one in Málaga.

Asset portfolio

Although the Socimi managed by Azora specialises in hotel assets, it has made significant investments in offices and the residential segment over the years since its creation.

At the end of the first quarter of the year, the company held a portfolio of assets worth €2,024 million. Of the total, €1,292 million corresponded to hotel assets, €526 million to office buildings and €230 million to residential assets.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

FREO Completes Second Purchase In Spain

22 May 2017 – Freo Group

FREO has made its second acquisition in Spain, this time in conjunction with a large American investment fund. Together they have purchased a value-add office portfolio comprising 14 assets distributed between Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. The portfolio was purchased from BBVA (one of Spain’s largest banks).

The majority of the portfolio consists of good quality office assets in the major sub-markets of Madrid and Barcelona – namely Julian Camarillo, Manoteras and Alcobendas in Madrid and 22@ in Barcelona.

FREO will be responsible for the asset management of the portfolio and will execute a variety of asset specific business plans due to the heterogeneity of the portfolio, ranging from small amounts of capex and leasing/lease renegotiation, through to total asset refurbishment and repositioning projects.

Original story: Freo Group

Edited by: Carmel Drake