Tag: OHL

Villar Mir Puts ‘Torre Espacio’ On The Market For €700M

30 June 2015 – Expansión

A new mega real estate transaction is taking shape in Spain, involving ‘Torre Espacio’ – the 236 metre tall skyscraper that the Villar Mir Group owns in the Cuatro Torres Business Area, in Madrid.

The Villar Mir Group, owner of the OHL construction company and the Espacio real estate company, has just put one of the most iconic buildings in the capital up for sale. According to sources close to the process, the property, which contains 60,140 m2 of office space, has an asking price of between €650 million and €700 million.

Villar Mir’s decision to sell the building, through a process organised by the consultancy Aguirre Newman, comes barely a month after the company was awarded the plot of land adjoining the Cuatro Torres, where it will construct a new skyscraper.

The sale of Torre Espacio, which opened in 2007, will generate significant capital gains for the company owned by Juan Miguel Villar Mir, which invested €400 million to buy the site and construct the building. That amount includes the €187 million it paid to purchase the land, as well as all of the financial expenses incurred during the construction period.

Torre Espacio, which was the first of the four buildings in the complex to open, has an occupancy ratio of 85%. Its tenants include the Villar Mir Group, some of its subsidiaries (Fertiberia, Ferroatlántica and Espacio), as well as the embassies of the UK, Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

According to initial calculations, when the tower is fully leased, it will generate annual income of €28 million.

Original source: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Villar Mir Will Build A New Skyscraper On La Castellana

30 April 2015 – Expansión

Through his real estate subsidiary Espacio, the businessman Juan Miguel Villar Mir has been awarded the plot of land behind the Cuatro Torres complex in Madrid, where he will build a private hospital and a shopping area.

There will soon been a fifth skyscraper in the complex known, until now, as the Cuatro Torres Business Area, on the Paseo de la Castellana, in Madrid. Yesterday, the Town Hall of Madrid announced that it was awarding the plot of land located behind the complex, to the real estate company Espacio, owned by the businessman Juan Miguel Villar Mir.

Espacio will construct a private hospital with a shopping area on this land. The businessman, who also owns the construction company OHL and who is the primary shareholder of Colonial, has won the award process for this plot of land, where the Town Hall of Madrid was originally going to build the International Convention Centre, before it was forced to suspend its plans in 2010, due to a lack of funding.

At the end of 2014, Ana Botella’s Government decided to seek an alternative plan for this plot of land and it organised a bid in which it asked for participants to offer an annual fee of €1.935 million for the right to use the plot of land. Four bids were submitted but only two were admitted since one did not exceed the (minimum) required fee and the other was ruled out for formal reasons.

One of the two projects that made the cut was led by the property company Hispania, which presented its bid jointly with Ferrovial, and committed itself to paying €2.6 million (per year). Villar Mir, meanwhile, offered to pay €4 million per year for the next 75 years.

The land situated just behind the existing Cuatro Torres has a surface area of 33,325 square metres and a buildable area of 70,000 square metres. In this space, to which a green area measuring 33,647 square metres will be added, the winning bidder will have to allocate 53,500 square metres for public use; the remaining 16,500 square metres may be destined for commercial use.

Villar Mir’s proposal is to construct a skyscraper, which will be similar to the other towers in terms of height and which will house a hospital. “The building will be as tall as the neighbouring towers and will house health services, and the top floors will be occupied by scientific companies linked to the health sector”.

Moreover, next to the skyscrapers, Espacio will create another, low-level building, which will be used to provide recreational and commercial services for the new skyscraper and the four existing ones, which mainly house offices. “Most of the construction will be horizontal, built in a north-south direction, over the entire floor of the structure that has already been constructed and designed based on landscaped terraces, which will descend from the high public square down to the pedestrian access, which is reached from the plot classified as a green area”, said (a representative from) the project.

In addition, the new skyscraper will be connected to the four that have already been constructed – which all have direct access from the Castellana – through a landscaped pedestrian zone.

In total, Villar Mir will invest €500 million in the project, including both the full (canon) payment and the construction work. Of this amount, €134.06 million will be spent on the building and development of the plot.

This project comes in addition to the plan to lengthen the Paseo de la Castellana by 3.7km to the north on land that Renfe and Adif own in the area.

Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Villar Mir Will Construct A Skyscraper Close To Cuatro Torres

20 April 2015 – Expansión

Project / The owner of OHL and Espacio is going to invest €500 million on the construction of a building behind the Castellana complex in Madrid, which will house a hospital and a shopping centre.

The businessman Juan Miguel Villar Mir (pictured above) is going to promote a new large real estate project in Madrid. The business man, who is in the middle of the construction of a hotel, residential and commercial complex in Canalejas, in the centre of the capital, through his group Villar Mir, has submitted the best offer for the plot of land located just behind the Cuatro Torres Business Area complex.

The land, which has a surface area of 33,325 square metres and a buildable surface area of 70,000 square meters, was originally going house a convention centre. However, in 2010, the Town Hall of Madrid halted the project, despite having already commenced the construction work, due to a lack of funds and, at the end of 2014, it decided to seek an alternative plan. In March, the Government of Ana Botella received several offers – four to be specific.

Other offers

In the end, Grupo Villar Mar has been named as the winner of the tender process, at the expense of the proposal submitted by the Socimi Hispania, which participated with Ferrovial.

Villar Mir made the highest bid, since the group that owns the construction company OHL and the real estate firm Espacio will pay an annual fee of €4 million for the concession, which grants the right to use the plot of land for a period of 75 years. The town hall requested that the winning bidder pay an annual fee of at least €1.935 million. The other bid that was accepted, led by Hispania, offered to pay €2.6 million per year for the plot of land. A third proposal, submitted by Axa, was declared inadmissable due to formal defects and a fourth bid did not meet the minimum fee demanded by the Town Hall, according to sources close to the process.

Villar Mir’s proposal includes a hospital and a shopping centre. The Town Hall of Madrid demanded that around 53,000 square metres of the 70,000 square metres available would be allocated for public use, which will be the hospital area. The remainder, around 17,500 square meters will be turned into a shopping cenetre to provide services for the area.

Villar Mir will place the entire buildable area in a single building, which may have up to 35 floors, similar to Torre Picasso, which is 156 metres tall, compared with the 250 metre high Torre Foster and Torre de Cristal, located next to the future property. “It will be an iconic building”, say sources close to the process.

The company expects to invest €500 million the project, including construction costs, which will amount to around €200 million and the payment of the concession, which will amount to €300 million in total. Villar Mir is negotiating with several hospital groups that already operate in Madrid to become their landlord, although its negotiations with one player in particular are more advanced than with others, explain the same sources.

Currently, the Cuatro Torres complex, located at number 259 Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, has four skyscrapers: Torre Foster, owned by Bankia and leased to Cepsa; Torre PwC, owned by Testa; Torre de Cristal, owned by Mutua Madrileña; and Torre Espacio, owned by the real estate arm of the Villar Mir group.

Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Villar Mir Raises €268 Million Funding For Canalejas Project

29/12/2014 – Cinco Dias

The Villar Mir and OHL Group closed Canalejas Project financing by signing a credit agreement for a maximum amount of EUR 268 million, making it the largest financing operation granted to a real estate development project in Spain over recent years.

Specifically, funding has been signed-on for a period of 10 years – 3 years of construction and 7 of exploitation, according to the company.

This transaction involves a group of Spanish and foreign financial institutions: Banco Santander, CaixaBank, Banco Popular Español, which have acted as mandated lead arrangers in addition to Bankinter, Unicaja Banco, MoraBanc Group, Inmomutua Madrileña and Generali Insurance and Reinsurance.

The Canalejas complex, developed by the Grupo Villar Mir, in a landmark location in Madrid will employ about 4,800 workers and reach an annual sales volume of nearly €200 million.

The project, which seeks to promote urban renewal of the iconic area in downtown Madrid also entails the opening of the first hotel of the Canadian luxury chain Four Seasons in Spain.

The 5-star luxury hotel will have an area of 26,000 sq. m, 215 rooms, banquets and meeting halls, 2 restaurants, a spa, gym as well as an indoor swimming pool. It will also feature between 28 and 30 residences for sale, spread over a total area of 6,000 sq. m.

Canalejas will also feature a shopping mall of 16,000 sq. m. over 3 storeys and an underground parking lot. All this will be complemented with an underground bus station on Calle Sevilla and refurbishment of the existing parking lot, which will be carried out by the City.

The purpose of this complex is to rehabilitate the historic downtown of Madrid and make use of 7 contiguous properties located on Calle Alcalá, Calle Sevilla, Plaza de Canalejas and Carrera de San Jerónimo. Having remained unoccupied for 10 years and some of them dating back to 1887, the properties were sold to Villar Mir Group from Banco Santander in a €215-million transaction.

Since they were acquired in December 2012, restoration work on various protected structures have been carried out as well as interior demolition and facade cladding works.

With respect to protected structures, there are over 130 listed elements of carpentry, locksmith’s works, stonework and stained glass windows. They will be restored and relocated in the future project to be fully operational in 2017.

The Canalejas project involves an important job creation feature. In the construction phase, from 2013 to 2017, 600 direct and 1,200 indirect jobs will be generated. The operational phase is expected to create over 3,000 direct or indirect jobs – 1,200 in the hotel and 1,800 in the shopping center.

Original article: Cinco Dias (by EFE)

Translation: Aura REE

OHL Transfers 5% in Abertis to Villar Mir’s Topline Inmobiliaria Espacio for €701.91 Mn

15/10/2014 – Bolsamania

OHL has sold a total of 44.91 million shares of Abertis, correspondent to 5% of the firm’s stake, to Inmobiliaria Espacio, principal company of Grupo Villar Mir, for €704,91 million.

The amount indicates that each share’s price stood at €15.6944, while currently they are traded at 14.8200 euros each (down 1.17%).

The operation, expected to conclude still this week, increases stake of OHL in Abertis from former 13.925% to 18.925%. The company is going to intend the equity obtained from the sale for paying in advance a part of its debt with recourse secured by the transferred shareholding.

The Syndicate Agreement

OHL and Inmobiliaria Espacio signed a syndicate agreement on the stake of Abertis with view to ‘coordinate and unanimous excercise of corresponding voting rights’. In case of lack of agreement between the parties, majority of votes shall prevail. The contract will be in force for one year with possibility of prolonging it to the next years.

 

Original article: Bolsamanía (by Sara Carbonell)

Translation: AURA REE