Starwood Wins the Bid to Acquire the San Fernando Business Park for €120M

22 May 2018 – Eje Prime

Starwood Capital has sealed the purchase of a new asset in Madrid. The private equity fund has reached an agreement with Oaktree to acquire the San Fernando Business Park for €120 million. The operation, according to market sources, is pending the finishing touches, but technically has now been completed.

In this way, Starwood has broken into the Spanish office market by outbidding other international investors, such as the PE house Carlyle, which had expressed interest in the asset, according to Expansión.

San Fernando Business Park ended up in the hands of Oaktree three years ago. It was then that the US fund purchased a portfolio of unpaid debt worth €750 million from the German bad bank FMS Wertmanagement (FMS WM).

That portfolio included, in addition to this office complex, luxury hotels such as the Arts Hotel in Barcelona and another hotel in Cascais (Portugal); five shopping centres, including the Madrilenian Plaza Éboli and Heron City Las Rozas; several storeroom buildings; and some residential and industrial assets.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Lar España Buys ‘El Rosal’ Shopping Centre For €87.5M

9 July 2015 – Info Bierzo

The Socimi Lar España has acquired the ‘El Rosal’ shopping centre in Ponferrada for €87.5 million, according to Spain’s National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).

According to Lar, El Rosal has a catchment area of more than 200,000 inhabitants and an occupancy rate of 92%. Moreover, its tenants include high profile brands such as Carrefour, Zara, C&A, H&M and Worten.

Lar has taken out a fifteen year loan with CaixaBank amounting to €87.3 million to finance the transaction. It is the second shopping centre that the Socimi has purchased this year, after it acquired ‘As Termas’ shopping centre in April for €67 million.

“We also note that this is the only shopping centre within a 100km radius, which broadens its appeal even further. The fact that Ponferrada and El Bierzo are surrounded by mountains and hills creates a unique catchment area, in which all roads lead to the town in (the province of) León”, says Miguel Pereda, Director at Lar.

The purchase of El Rosal is the largest transaction that Lar has carried out to date, as part of its strategy to acquire “shopping centres that are located in major catchment areas, with potential for growth and no sizeable shopping centres nearby”.

“The centre received more than 5.4 million visitors in 2014…”, says Pereda. Over the medium term, the real estate company plans to invest €3.4 million in operators and on the building.

With this transaction, Lar now has a total investment assets of €658.4 million, of which €368.4 million has been spent on the acquisition of 7 shopping centres, located in Lugo, Guipúzcoa, Palencia, Albacete, Barcelona and Alicante, and now Ponferrada.

The El Rosal complex opened in October 2007 and has a surface area of more than 151,000 m2 (retail space of 50,800 m2), as well as 2,450 parking spaces.

The British fund Doughty Hanson, which owned the shopping centre until Wednesday has sold 100% of the capital. The British firm sold the ‘Plaza Éboli‘ shopping centre, in Pinto, in June for a reported consideration of €30 million. It paid €120 million for the two shopping centres in El Bierzo and Madrid four years ago.

Original story: Info Bierzo

Translation: Carmel Drake

Project Gaudí: Oaktree Acquires Reduced Portfolio For €260M

25 June 2015 – CoStar Finance

Oaktree Capital Management has finalised the purchase of a reduced non-performing loan portfolio from FMS Wertmanagement (Project Gaudi) paying around €260m in cash, after a back bid sale of a Bilbao shopping centre to Grupo Lar and the removal of two loans prior to transaction close.

According to CoStar News, Grupo Lar, the Spanish developer and investor, has acquired the 1.35m sq ft Megapark Barakaldo shopping centre in Bilbao, in a back to back bid for just over €150 million.

Megapark Barakaldo was previously owned by Resolution Property, who acquired the retail centre for more than €200 million in January 2006, from Arcona Iberia and its joint venture partners, financed by Hypo Real Estate Bank International and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Resolution Property sold Megapark Barakaldo to another investor in 2012, which inherited the encumbered debt.

In addition, FMS Wertmanagement removed two loans from the original €735 million portfolio, contraining 18 NPL loans (Project Gaudi):

1) The first was a loan securing the circa 333,700 sq ft Plaza Éboli shopping centre in Pinto in the south of Madrid. HIG Capital recently acquired Plaza Éboli from Doughty Hanson, the UK private equity firm, for €30m, repaying the loan back to FMS Wertmanagement at par.

2) The second was a combined €125 millioin investment, development and VAT financing facility, granted to Bluespace, formerly known as Blue Self Storage, in July 2007. It was used to fund the acquisition of 17 self-storage properties – in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. FMS Wertmanagement has retained that non-performing loan.

These two removed loans are thought to account for an unpaid loan balance of around €100 million in aggregate. This reduces the original nominal value of Project Gaudi’s NPL portfolio (€735 million) to an unpaid balance of €635 million.

CoStar News understands that Oaktree paid €410m for the slightly slimmer Project Gaudi, reflecting a discount of 35.4%.

Furthermore, the immediate back bid purchase of Megapark Barakaldo by Grupo Lar for circa €150 millions implies the net price that Oaktree paid was €260 million, which was likely paid on an all-cash basis by Oaktree given the final size of the deal.

FMS Wertmanagement closed the sale of Project Gaudi with Oaktree two weeks ago. This was the German bad bank’s maiden NPL portfolio sale in Europe.

CoStar News understands that FMS Wertmanagement is considering two further country-focused loan portfolio sales for the bad bank’s Netherlands and Italian sub and non-performing loans. (…)

Original story: CoStar Finance (by James Wallace)

Edited by: Carmel Drake

HIG Capital Buys ‘Plaza Éboli’ Shopping Centre For €30M

24 June 2015 – Expansión

This purchase represents HIG Capital’s eighteenth investment in Europe since early 2013 and its fifth in Spain. The private equity fund is based in Miami. 

The private equity fund HIG Capital has acquired the Plaza Éboli shopping centre in the Madrilenian suburb of Pinto…from the venture capital firm Doughty Hanson.

The company has not revealed the consideration paid, but reports say it amounted to €30 million.

The shopping centre, which opened in 2005, has a surface area of more than 31,000 m2 and its tenants include large retail distributors, such as Inditex, H&M, C&A and Cortefiel.

HIG is continuing to expand its exceptional portfolio of real estate assets in Europe, which span both financing and capital contributions. It places a special emphasis on opportunities in small- and medium-sized companies, its target market.

HIG’s Director, Ahmed Hamdani, says that the purchase of the Plaza Éboli shopping centre “demonstrates” the company’s capacity to “identify assets with strong growth potential” and to close “complex acquisitions” in short time frames. (…)

Since it was founded in 1993, HIG has invested and managed more than 200 companies all over the world. The firm’s current portfolio comprises 80 companies with aggregate annual revenues of more than €22,000 million.

Original story: Expansión (by M. L. Verbo)

Translation: Carmel Drake