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23 April 2015 – Expansión
Activity continues apace in the shopping centre sector. The private equity firm Doughty Hanson is finalising the sale of two shopping centres in Spain, namely Plaza Eboli in Pinto (Madrid) and El Rosal in Ponferrada (León), which it acquired in 2011 for €120 million.
The two properties were acquired by Doughty in March 2011 and four years later, they are getting ready to change hands. The company paid the Portuguese real estate company Sonae Sierra €120 million for both assets. Now it is selling them for €115 million, according to sources close to the transaction.
For the centre in León, Doughty has received an offer from the Socimi Lar España for €85 million. In the case of Plaza Éboli, the fund is finalising its sale to the US investor HIG for around €30 million.
Plaza Éboli was opened in March 2005 and has a constructible surface area of 62,000 square metres, over four floors, of which 31,306 square metres are used for retail space. The main tenants include E. Leclerc, which has a supermarket, and a chain of cinemas, which occupies more than 2,000 square metres. Moreover, the centre has 1,004 parking spaces.
In the case of El Rosal, the property was opened in October 2007. It has a surface area of more than 151,000 square metres of which 50,851 square metres are used for retail space, according to the Spanish Association of Shopping Centres. It also has 2,450 parking spaces.
With its acquisition of El Rosal, the Socimi Lar España is continuing to increase the number of assets in its portfolio (especially retail premises and logistics warehouses), which were valued at €406 million at 31 December 2014. These include the shopping centres L’Anec Balu in Castelldefels (Barcelona) and Albacenter, in Albacete.
Socimi
Already this year, the Socimi controlled by Miguel Pereda has acquired the As Termas shopping centre in La Coruña for €67 million.
The real estate company debuted on the stock exchange in March 2014 with €400 million of capital to invest; funds it had received from large institutional investors, such as Pimco.
Meanwhile, the interest expressed by the US fund HIG Capital in the Madrid shopping centre reflects the investor frenzy between large international funds. In the case of HIG, it closed its first real estate acquisition purchase in 2013 when it acquired almost one thousand homes from Sareb, as part of the so-called portfolio Bull.
Original story: Expansión (by R. Ruiz)
Translation: Carmel Drake