Tag: Project Jaipur

Cerberus & Blackstone Compete to become Largest RE Firm in Spain

16 October 2018 – Expansión

The US funds Cerberus and Blackstone are battling it out for first place on the podium in the Spanish real estate sector. Cerberus, which has just completed the purchase of 80% of BBVA’s real estate business, has invested more than €10 billion in real estate transactions in the country over the last year. Specifically, Cerberus will now control 80% of Divarian Propiedad, the company to which BBVA has transferred its real estate business and in which the bank will retain the remaining 20%. The groups have not disclosed the price of the transaction or the value of the assets included in Divarian, although the bank did indicate at the time that its intention was to transfer assets with a gross accounting value of approximately €13 billion at an estimated price of around €4 billion.

Anida’s workforce

Divarian, which is going to be managed by Cerberus, will incorporate the specialist staff from BBVA’s former real estate platform, Anida, comprising 400 professionals, into its team.

In addition to this operation, known as Project Marina, Cerberus reached an agreement with Santander in the middle of September to purchase a portfolio of residential properties for around €1.535 billion comprising 35,700 properties, including parking spaces and storerooms. This transaction followed Project Jaipur – a portfolio of property developer loans also acquired from BBVA -; the portfolios Challenger and Coliseum, with a combined gross value of around €9.1 billion, acquired from Sabadell; and Ágora, the portfolio that Cerberus purchased from CaixaBank.

In addition to the purchase of real estate portfolios, Cerberus is the owner of: Haya Real Estate, the largest independent Spanish servicer with €40 billion in assets under management; the property developer Inmoglacier; the online real estate agency between individuals Housell; and Gescobro, the debt recovery company.

The fund, which has not specified how much it has invested since it arrived in the country, has become, together with Blackstone, one of the most active players in the purchase of doubtful debt portfolios (NPLs) and foreclosed assets (REO) with real estate collateral, and has closed more than 30 transactions in Spain over the last five years, even before the recovery of the sector.

Testa

Meanwhile, Blackstone has acquired around €20 billion in property since 2012, to which the Socimi specialising in residential rental assets, Testa, must be added, given that the US fund now controls 70% of that firm’s share capital. The fund marked a milestone last year when it purchased 51% of Banco Popular’s real estate business from Santander, with a book value of around €10.3 billion. To group together the assets, Blackstone and Santander created Project Quasar Investment, a company that includes Aliseda.

The fund is also the largest owner of hotels in Spain through HI Partners and Hispania, one of the leaders in the logistics and office ownership market in Spain.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Project Sintra: BBVA Engages PwC to Sell €1bn of Toxic Loans

13 March 2018 – Voz Pópuli

BBVA does not want to waste any more time on the real estate clean-up exercise. In the last few days, the entity chaired by Francisco González has launched a €1 billion portfolio on the market: Project Sintra, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. It is being advised in the operation by PwC. Neither the bank nor the consultancy firm wanted to comment.

This portfolio is the penultimate step for BBVA in the reduction of its real estate exposure to zero, after the agreement it reached with Cerberus to transfer €13 billion of foreclosed assets, as this newspaper revealed. That sale, Project Marina, is still pending the necessary authorisations and is scheduled to be closed in the middle of this year.

The balance of BBVA’s divestments is as follows: before Project Marina, the entity had a gross exposure (not including provisions) of almost €16 billion, which will end up at just over €3 billion. Of that figure, two-thirds relate to unpaid loans linked to land and completed developments, with a coverage ratio of 54%.

With this new operation, BBVA wants to be crowned as the first major entity to get rid of its inheritance from the crisis. Last year, Santander closed the sale of €30 billion from Popular to Blackstone, but it still has €11.7 billion left to divest.

The same stars

With Project Sintra, BBVA has now awarded the mandate for three consecutive operations to PwC. It did so with Project Jaipur, worth €600 million, which was acquired by Cerberus; and Project Marina, which had the same advisor and buyer.

The latter operation generated unease amongst certain funds, which complained to the bank because it had not opened a competitive process, but instead chose to negotiate one on one with Cerberus. Sources close to that operation defended that a bilateral sale could optimise both the price and an auction, thanks to the threat of opening the process to more rivals.

In this way, BBVA is one of the entities that has decided to accelerate the sale of portfolios during the first quarter, like Sareb, which is finalising the sale of between three and four packages: Nora, Bidasoa, Dune and Slap, with a combined volume of €3.2 billion.

One of the most fashionable assets and one that entities are increasingly including in their portfolios is land. In this way, Sareb is preparing an operation containing land only and Kutxabank is evaluating a similar process.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cerberus Gets its Cheque Book out again to Buy NPLs from CaixaBank

4 December 2017 – Voz Pópuli

Cerberus is stepping on the accelerator in Spain. The US fund has starred in another major operation just days after acquiring a real estate portfolio from BBVA. One of Cerberus’s subsidiaries, Gescobro, has won an auction for €0.8 billion in non-performing loans and real estate from CaixaBank.

The fund has purchased part of that portfolio, known as Project Egeo, whilst the Norwegian group Lindorff has bought the rest, according to financial sources consulted by this newspaper.

Part (€0.5 billion – €0.6 billion) of this €0.8 billion portfolio comprises unsecured loans (credit cards, personal loans and others without any guarantee) and just over €0.2 billion relates to loans to SMEs secured by real estate.

This is Cerberus’s fourth operation in the Spanish financial and real estate sector in 2017 following the acquisition of Project Jaipur from BBVA (€0.6 billion in non-performing property developer loans; the purchase of the real estate arm of Liberbank, Mihabitans, for €85 million; and the acquisition of €13 billion in property from BBVA for €4 billion.

Strategic fit

The sale of Project Egeo, which is still pending the completion of the necessary paperwork, forms part of the routine divestment plans of the Catalan group. In this way, it is managing and controlling its default rate and complying with the regulatory requirements of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Currently, the group’s default rate stands at 6.4%, after falling by seven tenths in the last year. In total, its doubtful loans amount to €15.3 billion, of which €13.9 billion are in Spain. It has another €7.2 billion in foreclosed assets.

The firm that has won the auction, Gescobro, has been led by Iheb Nafaa until now, but he was recently poached by Servihabitat, the real estate company owned by TPG (51%) and CaixaBank (49%).

Meanwhile, Lindorff has been one of the main competitors in the bank debt market since 2012. More than a year ago, it expanded its real estate business with the purchase of Aktua, the former real estate arm of Banesto; and it strengthened its business through a merger with Intrum Justicia.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Morgan Stanley Lends Cerberus €3bn to Purchase BBVA’s RE

1 December 2017 – Voz Pópuli

Of the cheque for €4 billion that BBVA is going to receive for the sale of its foreclosed real estate, €3 billion will be coming from Morgan Stanley’s coffers. The US investment bank has been awarded the mandate to finance Cerberus’s operation, whereby fighting off competition from other international and Spanish entities, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

Unlike in the case of Blackstone and Popular-Santander, Cerberus has decided to close its financing arrangements in advance, even though the small print of the agreement will still take a few months to negotiate.

As this newspaper revealed, BBVA has agreed to sell all of its foreclosed assets to the US fund in an operation worth €5 billion. A new company will be created to which assets worth €13 billion and the Anida platform with its 450 employees will be transferred, with the option of also moving another 150 employees from the bank. And Cerberus will buy an 80% stake in this company for around €4 billion.

The figures may still vary slightly over the next few months, given that both BBVA and the fund have to review which assets have exited the portfolio in recent months because they have been sold (through the network).

The start

The operation, known as Project Marina, was launched at the beginning of June and is expected to be closed with a discount of approximately 61%, which is lower than the 67% that Santander obtained from its sale of Popular’s real estate.

That sale – Project Quasar – is also pending completion, expected during the first quarter of 2018.

After removing €13 billion in foreclosed assets from its balance sheet, BBVA will put one or more property developer loan portfolios on the market over the next year or so, as it continues to accelerate the digestion of its property assets. Those portfolios will be similar in size to Project Jaipur (€0.6 billion), which was also awarded to Cerberus.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Deutsche Bank: BBVA & Unicaja Cut Their Toxic Assets By 15% In 2017

14 November 2017 – Expansión

Deutsche Bank report / Sales to institutional investors of non-performing loans and properties allowed BBVA to reduce its stock by €4,589 million. Meanwhile, Unicaja has decreased its load by €818 million.

The clean up of the banks’ balance sheets is picking up speed thanks to the increasingly common sales of large property portfolios to specialist funds.

Between January and September, the average decrease in the stock of the large banks amounted to 6%; moreover, that figure reached 15% in the case of BBVA España. The next entity in the ranking was Unicaja, with a decrease of 14%.

During the third quarter, Santander España distorted the statistics with the sale of 51% of Popular’s toxic assets (€30,000 million) to Blackstone.

Project Jaipur

BBVA has closed several institutional sales in recent months. One of them, Project Jaipur, was sold to Cerberus, the fund with which it is now negotiating a macro-operation, which would include the sale of its real estate platform Anida. That portfolio comprises loans to property developers backed by real estate guarantees and has a gross nominal value of €600 million.

In February, BBVA sold a batch of 3,500 properties to the fund Blackstone. Another one of the representative operations of the year was the sale of 14 office buildings to Oaktree for €200 million.

Unicaja has sold several plots of land to various real estate developers in recent months. “Unlike in other quarters, during the third quarter of the year, most of the reduction in the banks’ problem assets came from the sale of foreclosed properties, despite the substantial decrease in activity in August”, says the recent report from Deutsche Bank.

Between June and September, CaixaBank was the most active entity, with sales worth €380 million.

The report cites several factors to explain the intensification of this real estate clean up. The first is the increase in the coverage ratio of these toxic assets on the banks’ balance sheets. “The volume of sales is directly linked to the coverage ratio”, it says.

The second is that many of these sales are generating capital gains. According to the data compiled by Deutsche Bank, Unicaja made €40 million in the third quarter and CaixaBank and Sabadell earned €6 million and €7 million, respectively. “These gains will allow them to accelerate future sales”, says the report.

Final quarter

The last quarter of the year tends to be the strongest for these types of operations. Sareb has put a package of doubtful loans up for sale, the vast majority of which are unsecured, for €2,600 million. “We expect to see an additional effort from the banking institutions to reduce the stock at year end. Having said that, the political uncertainty in Cataluna and the upcoming elections may affect prices and/or cause delays in institutional sales”, says Deutsche Bank, which forecasts further stock decreases of 15% in 2018 and 2019. According to its data, CaixaBank, Santander and BBVA are the banks with the highest volume of toxic assets. Since 2015, BBVA has decreased its real estate balance by 27% and Unicaja by 24%.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Lander)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Awaits FGD’s Approval To Sell €14,000M RE Portfolio To Cerberus

13 November 2017 – Voz Pópuli

The largest operation of the home stretch of 2017 is pushing ahead. BBVA and Cerberus are close to reaching an agreement regarding the sale of a large proportion of the bank’s real estate assets to the US fund. Financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli indicate that a deal may be signed within the next few weeks, between late November and early December.

One of the points still being discussed is the perimeter (of the transaction). The sources consulted indicate that what is on the table is the option of selling a stake in a new company with assets and loans worth €14,000 million.

The same sources add that an agreement could have already been reached if it hadn’t been for the crisis in Cataluña and the need for the Deposit Guarantee Fund (‘Fondo de Garantía de Depósitos’ or FGD) to give its approval. BBVA received an asset protection scheme (‘Esquema de protección de activos’ or EPA) for which the FGD committed to cover “80% of the losses resulting from a portfolio of assets worth €7,359.7 million”.

BBVA has real estate exposure on its balance sheet amounting to €17,774 million in total, according to the most recent figures. Of that figure, foreclosed assets (€11,937 million) and doubtful loans (€3,357 million) account for €15,300 million. Those loans and properties have a coverage ratio of more than 61%. For this reason, BBVA could sell them for 39% of their appraisal value without having to recognise any losses. Even so, the FGD would still need to approve any deal.

The need for consent from the FGD could delay any asset sale for several months. That is what has happened, on more than one occasion, to Banco Sabadell, such as with Project Normandy. It is worth remembering that the FGD’s Management Committee comprises not only regulators and Government members but also bankers, who do not want to spend even one more euro of their resources (…).

Although BBVA’s sale (known as Project Marina and Sena) is on track, the sources consulted indicate that it could all be thrown up in the air at any moment. “It would not be the first time that an operation that has almost been finalised dies off because of one of BBVA’s management committees or Board of Director meetings”, they say. The same thing is happening with Cerberus, one of the most inflexible funds when it comes to price: “Once the price has been fixed, it is very difficult to move it or play with counter-offers”, they add.

This operation has generated a lot of commotion amongst other opportunistic funds, many of whom were not invited to participate, and who have even indicated their displeasure to BBVA’s leaders. The negotiations between Cerberus and the bank arose after the fund’s President, John W. Snow (former US Treasury Secretary) cracked the whip over his own management team in Spain. He did so after Cerberus missed out on the sale of Popular’s real estate, which was awarded to Blackstone.

Snow himself decided to come to Madrid in person to meet with the President of BBVA, Francisco González (pictured above) and propose an operation similar in size to Project Quasar (Popular). Indeed, Cerberus purchased a €600 million portfolio from the bank in June, Project Jaipur, which gave rise to the current negotiations.

Although the operation still hangs in the balance, BBVA has never been as close to sealing an agreement like this one. There is a lot of optimism amongst the advisors to the operation, PwC and Linklaters. But, for the time being, anything can happen.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake