Tag: property developer loans

Sareb Sells a €247M Property Developer Loan Portfolio

21 December 2018 – Europa Press

The Company for the Management of Assets proceeding from the Restructuring of the Banking System (Sareb) has closed the sale to an international consortium of a new portfolio of property developer loans, whose nominal value amounts to €247 million.

According to a statement issued by the bad bank, the portfolio, called Adra, groups together loans secured by properties located primarily in Andalucía, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria and the Community of Valencia.

The process was launched in June and the transaction has been undertaken in compliance with the most stringent requirements in terms of transparency and fair competition, assured Sareb.

The sale of this portfolio has received financial advice from Colliers and legal advice from Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF).

Original story: Europa Press 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Kutxabank Sells a €700M Property Developer Loan Portfolio to Bain

21 December 2018 – Cinco Días

Kutxabank has sold a “problem property developer loan” portfolio with a gross valuation of €700 million to a subsidiary of Bain Capital Credit. The portfolio includes doubtful assets and non-performing loans to property developers, according to a statement issued by the entity chaired by Gregorio Villalabeitia (pictured below).

The divestment includes both loans with mortgage guarantees, secured by land for the most part (48% of the total), as well as finished homes (another 29%). They are located in Andalucía and Euskadi.

The transaction has materialised through a competitive bidding process, which has been coordinated by the investment bank Alantra.

Sources at the vendor bank indicate that there is “a great investor appetite” in the market for this type of asset at the moment, a situation that has encouraged the entity to take the decision to divest these assets, the first operation of this kind that it has undertaken in its history.

The divestment will improve Kutxabank’s results this year and will reduce its exposure in the courts, due to the costs associated with the litigation relating to these assets. The bank has already calculated that, following this operation, its default ratio will improve by 50 basis points to fall below 4%.

The sale of the real estate portfolio will also have a positive impact on the bank’s CTE 1 capital ratio, which will increase by 10 basis points. According to the bank, it will thereby consolidate its position of leadership as the most solvent entity in the country.

Bain Capital Credit, with 200 employees, invests in the entire spectrum of loans, including leveraged loans, high-yield bonds and structured products, amongst others. Bain Capital has been advised in this operation by Copernicus, Aura, JLL and Allen & Overy.

Original story: Cinco Días

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander Awards the Management of Popular’s €5bn Portfolio to Blackstone

12 November 2018 – Expansión

Santander and Blackstone have reached an agreement whereby the US fund, through the real estate servicer Aliseda, has taken on the management of a portfolio of assets from Popular amounting to €5 billion, which Santander is retaining on its balance sheet. The portfolio includes real estate assets and loans linked to the retail segment and Santander is retaining ownership of 100% of the assets. They were left out of the transfer of Popular’s assets to Quasar, the joint venture that the bank and Blackstone launched last year.

Santander transferred the bulk of Popular’s damaged portfolio to Quasar (€30 billion gross, linked primarily to property developers), along with 100% of the share capital of Aliseda. Blackstone controls the management of Quasar and 51% of the shares and Santander the remaining 49%. The bank has this stake valued at €1.7 billion on its balance sheet.

“The assets under management have been classified into two different groups, to reflect their owner: the Santander Group portfolio, owned by Popular (and now absorbed by Santander) and the Popular portfolio, owned by Project Quasar 2017”, according to the annual accounts of Aliseda. Specific teams have been configured within the servicer to manage Santander’s assets.

As at June, the latest available disaggregated figures, the entity chaired by Ana Botín still had a portfolio of foreclosed assets amounting to €10.5 billion gross. They have been cleaned with €5.2 billion in provisions (48.9%), which brings their net value to €5.4 billion. Nevertheless, in September, it sold a portfolio of properties worth €1.5 billion to Cerberus. In addition, Santander has loans to property developers amounting to €5.7 billion. Of the total, €1.8 billion are doubtful balances, with a default rate of 32%.

Santander currently has agreements with three servicers (Altamira, Aliseda and Casaktua). It paid those three companies almost €460 million in management commissions last year.

Meanwhile, Aliseda, which is now controlled by Blackstone and Santander, has rescinded the syndicated loan that it signed in 2015. At the time, the funds Värde Partners and Kennedy Wilson owned 51% of the real estate manager’s share capital and Popular owned the remaining 49%.

Following the acquisition of Popular by Santander, the entity chaired by Ana Botón repurchased the 51% stake held by Värde Partners and Kennedy Wilson, as a step prior to the transfer of 100% of Aliseda to Quasar.

“According to the syndicated financing contract subscribed on 27 November 2015, the cancellation of the loan has been formalised, following the repayment of the principal and outstanding interest, and of the cancellation penalty for the overall amount of €266.03 million”, said Aliseda’s report.

The bank with the greatest share of the loan was Popular itself (33.33%), with an outstanding balance of €87.86 million at the end of 2017. Bankia, Santander, Sabadell and Bankinter, with shares of 10%, had outstanding balances of around €25 million each. ING (€24.3 million), Crédit Agricole (€23.3 million) and BBVA (€17.5 million) completed the group of banks in the syndicate.

The interest rate on the loan, conditioned on the debt ratio and the gross result of the company, was six-month Euribor plus a spread of between 2.75% and 3.50%.

Following the change of ownership of Aliseda and its senior management team, the servicer paid compensation for redundancies of €1.4 million last year. It also paid €5.64 million for a remuneration plan that granted certain executives the right to receive remuneration in the event of a change of control of the company.

Original story: Expansión (by M. Martínez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Project Newton: Bankia Puts €450M Toxic Asset Portfolio Up for Sale

21 September 2018 – Voz Pópuli

The insatiable appetite of the opportunistic funds for Spanish property is never ending and the banks are taking advantage to reduce their exposure to real estate assets and whereby clean up their balance sheets. The latest to come to the market is Bankia, which has put a €450 million portfolio up for sale comprising primarily property developer loans, although Project Newton, as the operation has been baptised, also includes a small proportion of foreclosed assets, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

Newton’s sale is expected to be completed this year and will be followed by two other asset portfolios that the bank plans to sell soon, according to reports from Bloomberg. The operations disclosed by the US agency include a €1,500M portfolio comprising unpaid mortgages and a €2,000M portfolio comprising foreclosed assets.

At the end of the first half of the year, the entity chaired by José Ignacio Goirigolzarri held €15.2 billion in toxic assets, after reducing its balance by €1.7 billion between the months of January and June.

Strategic plan

With the sale of the three aforementioned portfolios before the end of the year, the bank would more than exceed its annual objective in terms of asset sales, which amounts to €2.9 billion per year for the next three years. In fact, if Bankia divests all three portfolios, its real estate exposure would decrease to €11.25 billion, and so it would follow in the footsteps of the other entities that have accelerated the sale of these types of assets in the last year.

The most recent example is Santander, which on Wednesday closed the sale to Cerberus of a portfolio of properties worth around €2.79 billion with a 45% discount. The initial perimeter of the operation was €5.1 billion, but in the end, the commercial premises and land that had been included in Project Apple were left out of the final portfolio.

The entity already transferred Popular’s property last year to a joint venture with Blackstone, and so its real estate exposure will decrease to around €7.3 billion once the Apple sale is completed.

Meanwhile, BBVA, which also sold €13 billion in foreclosed assets to Cerberus, has entrusted the sale of €2.5 billion in problem loans to Alantra. That operation will reduce the real estate exposure of the bank chaired by Francisco González to almost zero.

Moreover, Sabadell and CaixaBank have also completed significant operations in recent months. The former sold €9.1 billion in foreclosed assets to Cerberus, whilst the latter divested almost all of its real estate business: €12.8 billion in real estate assets, which were acquired by Lone Star.

In this way, the banks are complying with the guidelines set out by the European Central Bank (ECB) and are generating returns from their businesses in Spain, which have been weighing them down since the economic crisis.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Pepe Bravo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Puts another €2.5bn Property Portfolio up for Sale

12 September 2018 – Voz Pópuli

BBVA’s exposure to the real estate sector will have been reduced to almost zero by the end of the year. Following the sale of almost all of its property to Cerberus, the entity chaired by Francisco González has decided to accelerate the divestment of its remaining delinquent loans. To this end, it has entrusted the sale of €2.5 billion in problem loans to Alantra, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli.

The operation has not been put on the market yet but it is expected to be communicated to opportunistic funds within a matter of days, maybe even this week. The name of the operation is Project Ánfora.

The operation is expected to be completed during the last quarter of the year. In that case, the year-end accounts for 2018, the final set that González will present, will reflect the fact that BBVA will have become the first large Spanish entity to clean up all of its real estate inheritance, with the exception of Bankinter, which barely had any to start with.

The latest official figures, as at June 2018, show that BBVA had real estate exposure amounting to €14.9 billion: €2.5 billion in loans to property developers and €11.5 billion in foreclosed assets, whose transfer to Cerberus will be closed soon.

Sudden push

Another entity that has also accelerated its clean-up process in recent months is Santander, with Project Apple, amounting to €5 billion, whose sale is currently being finalised, also to Cerberus. Afterwards, it will be left with another €5 billion to divest. The exposures of CaixaBank, Sabadell and Bankia are still above that level.

With this sudden push, the banks are seeking to fulfil the mandate established by the ECB and make their businesses in Spain profitable, which have been weighed down over the last decade by the digestion of property.

The sources consulted explain that Project Ánfora includes relatively small loans, such as mortgages and SME credits, which received financing linked to properties.

In addition to Ánfora and Marina – the sale of foreclosed assets to Cerberus – this year, BBVA has also closed the transfer of the Sintra portfolio to the largest Canadian fund, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), containing €1 billion in loans to property developers.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankia Puts €400M Toxic Asset Portfolio Up For Sale

2 April 2018 – Eje Prime

Bankia is accelerating the sale of its toxic assets. This year is set to be a key year for the banks, in general, in terms of property divestments, and Bankia is one of the firms that is working hardest to get rid of the real estate load left over on its balance sheet. The financial institution has placed on the market its largest portfolio of toxic assets in two years, worth €400 million.

Project Beetle, which is what the Spanish bank has called this macro-operation, primarily comprises non-performing loans backed by real estate collateral. When the sale closes, the company will strengthen its property divestment plan in 2018. It already disposed of one portfolio of toxic assets worth €290 million during the first quarter of the year, according to El Independiente.

The company chaired by José Ignacio Goirigolzarri has not sold such a large portfolio since December 2015. Then, it placed a portfolio worth €645 million. Last year, Bankia raised €300 million in three operations relating to assets with debt.

With the way paved for sales thanks to the investor appetite that is accompanying the upwards cycle in the real estate sector, the Spanish bank is going to continue with its divestments in 2018 without forgetting the property development market. Not in vain, Goirigolzarri has already announced that his bank will grant €400 million per year in property developer loans between now and 2020, boosted by an objective that the entity has set itself, and which appears in its strategic plan, of reaching a market share of between 7% and 8% over the next two years.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cerberus Prepares for Haya’s Stock Market Debut After the Summer

9 February 2018 – Cinco Días

Metrovacesa achieved it on Tuesday, despite problems to cover supply and the nefarious stock market session that it suffered. The large Spanish property developer, which abandoned the equity market in May 2013, made its return last week. It hasn’t exactly eased the way for the upcoming debuts of Vía Célere, owned by the fund Värde, or the Socimi Testa. But it hasn’t made a total hash of it either.

In this way, the US fund Cerberus is in the process of contracting the banks that will handle the debut its Spanish real estate servicer subsidiary on the stock market. The aim is for that firm to be listed from September. The entities that are on the list of candidates have already done their calculations and are citing a valuation for the company, albeit preliminary, of around €1.2 billion. The aim is to place between 35% and 50% of Haya Real Estate’s capital at this stage. A spokesman for the company declined to comment on this information.

The company, which was created in October 2013, manages property developer loans and foreclosed real estate assets from Bankia, Sareb, Cajamar, Liberbank, BBVA and other financial institutions, worth €39.88 billion at the end of September 2017.

The process of going public is the logical next step, after Haya placed €475 million in high yield bonds in November, with ratings of B3 (Moody’s) and B- (S&P). In other words, in the junk bond range, six levels below investment grade.

The underwriters of that debt, which matures in 2022, were Santander, Bankia, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. And they sold it with considerable success. Despite its credit rating, the firm pays an annual return of just over 5% for that liability.

Haya, led by Carlos Abad Rico (formerly of Canal + and Sogecable) offers services across the whole real estate value chain, but it is not a property developer. Rather, it manages, administers, securitises (…) and sells real estate assets such as homes and offices, but it does not own any of the properties.

Bankia Habitat was the seedling of Haya, and it has grown in line with the need by the financial sector to get rid of assets linked to property. One of Haya’s key businesses is the management of loans linked to the real estate sector. It advises on loans and guarantees, recovers debt and converts loans into foreclosed real estate assets.

The other major part of its revenues stems from the recovery and management of properties through their sale or rental. Haya employs 680 professionals and has a sales network of 2,400 brokers. The value of its property developer debt portfolio amounts to €28.7 billion and its real estate asset portfolio amounts to €11.2 billion. Moreover, Haya is going to bid to manage the assets sold by BBVA to Cerberus in November. Haya’s current shareholder acquired 80% of the BBVA’s portfolio of real estate assets, amounting to around €13 billion, for €4 billion (…)

Consolidation

The Spanish banks’ other real estate management companies are waiting for Cerberus to make the first move, according to financial sources. Haya will open the door to the stock market for them if everything goes well or it will serve to consolidate the sector, both here and in Europe.

There are three high profile players on the list. Servihabitat, which manages assets amounting to around €50 billion and which belongs to the fund Texas Pacific Group (TPG), which has held a 51% stake since September 2013, when CaixaBank sold it that percentage; the bank still holds onto the remaining 49%. Altamira, owned by Santander (15%) and the fund Apollo (85%), which also handles assets worth around €50 million in Spain. The volume managed by Solvia, owned by Sabadell, amounts to around €31 billion.

Moody’s warns that the business of Haya Real Estate, the largest company in the sector in Spain, depends on the economic performance of the company and the renewal of its current management contracts. Specifically, one of the most important, with Sareb (…), signed in 2013, is due to expire in December next year.

In terms of its strengths, the ratings agency indicates Haya’s extensive knowledge of the market and its high margins. The firm’s gross operating profit (EBITDA) during the first nine months of last year amounted to €89.8 million, with net income (the amount really invoiced by the company) of €165.8 million.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Pablo Martín Simón and Laura Salces)

Translation: Carmel Drake

CaixaBank: “The Banks Have Lost €150bn Due to ‘Real Estate'”

26 January 2018 – Eje Prime

The banks have lost no less than €150 billion due to real estate. That is according to Juan Antonio Alcaraz, Director General of CaixaBank, speaking on Thursday. Moreover, the director described a panorama that has “changed radically” in the mortgage market, basically because “people no longer think about buying (a home) and, even less so, about taking out a mortgage”, said Alcaraz.

The current situation of the banks with respect to real estate is that of reconstruction. “Our portfolio has recovered somewhat, but it is much smaller than before”, acknowledges the director, who recalls “the years when 900,000 new homes per year were being built in Spain, whereas now just 80,000 p.a. are being constructed”.

In 2017, CaixaBank undertook property developer loan operations worth between €15 billion and €20 billion. The decline in demand for these types of loans from banks has had an impact on the emergence of “new players, which have caused the figure of the property developer loan to disappear for certain vehicles”.

Moreover, at the meeting between professionals in the sector at Madrid’s IESE, Alcaraz recalled that there is still a shortage on the demand-side for the purchase of new build homes in Spanish society: “Three-quarters of the transactions closed in the residential sector involve second-hand homes”. That fact had an impact in 2017 given that Spain’s banks granted “around 60,000 new mortgages”, much fewer than in the past.

In terms of the emergence of real estate projects, which have been booming in recent years with the arrival of new property developers, the CaixaBank representative says that “there is not a single project that has not been performed for lack of financing”, although he clarifies: “The problem is what type of projects we are talking about and what is being financed”.

“On the stock market, there is space for many more companies in the sector”. Having recently arrived from London, where he works as a Director of Real Estate Investments for the bank Crédit Suisse, Jaime Riera spoke about overseas funds, the largest investors in the Spanish property market. “The whole world understands that it is a cyclical sector and that, leaving aside the recent political events, there is consensus over the strong performance of the real estate business”, said Riera. Nevertheless, the executive has diagnosed “less potential for transactions in the retail sector”.

Another established connoisseur of the British market, Fernando Bautista, European Director of Real Estate Investment at Citi, highlighted at the same meeting that the weight of the real estate sector on the British stock exchange “is much greater than on the Spanish stock market”. For that reason, and after recalling that “without Anglo-Saxon demand, we would not be talking about the Socimis today, or about Neinor and Aedas”, said that “there is room for lots more companies on the Spanish stock market”.

The legal certainty of the new mortgage law

Drafts are already being prepared by the Government for the processing of a new mortgage law, news that is welcomed by the banks. “A new law would give us the legal certainty that we do not have at the moment”, said Alcaraz, who indicates that “the crisis has generated a very high degree of uncertainty over residential assets and mortgages. That is very harmful to us in economic terms”.

Original story: Eje Prime (by Jabier Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Haya Real Estate Prepares for its Stock Market Debut

23 January 2018 – Cinco Días

Haya Real Estate is another player in the real estate sector that is heading towards the stock market. The firm manages property developer loans and foreclosed real estate assets on behalf of Bankia, Sareb, Cajamar, Liberbank, BBVA and other financial institutions, worth €39.884 billion.

The company is owned by the private equity fund Cerberus, which created it back in October 2013 after acquiring a firm dedicated to real estate management from Bankia, called Bankia Habitat, in light of the need for the Spanish financial sector to get rid of its property-related toxic assets in a professional way.

Sources at the investment bank indicate that Haya’s debut on the Spanish stock market has been sketched out and will follow the format of the debuts of the property developers Neinor and Aedas, in 2017, and the upcoming debuts of Metrovacesa and Vía Célere. No decision has yet been taken regarding the valuation or percentage of the stake that Cerberus will sell. The news of Haya’s possible stock market debut was published by Bloomberg on Monday night. A spokesperson for Haya declined to comment on the news.

Haya, led by Carlos Abad Rico (formerly of Canal + and Sogecable) offers services throughout the entire chain of the real estate sector, but it is not a property developer: it manages, administers, securitises and sells assets but does not own them. The company mainly focuses on two businesses. Firstly, the advice and subscription of loans and guarantees, the management and recovery of debt and the conversion of the obligations on property developer loans into foreclosed real estate assets. And, secondly, the recovery and management of property through its sale or rental. The firm employs 680 professionals and has a sales network comprising 2,400 brokers. The value of the firm’s property developer debt portfolio amounts to €28.719 billion and of its real estate assets is €11.165 billion.

Haya recorded EBITDA of €89.9 million during the first nine months of 2017, up by 54% compared to the same period a year earlier, with sales of assets worth around €2.5 billion and an effective turnover (essentially commissions) of €165.8 million. The average management fee during the first nine months of last year was 4.25%.

Competitors

Haya has been growing with aplomb since 2013, but it has several major rivals. Blackstone, which purchased 51% of Popular’s real estate assets from Santander last summer for more than €5 billion, created Anticipa Real Estate, under the structure of the former Cataluña Caixa Inmobiliaria. That platform acquired 40,000 mortgages from the extinct Catalan entity for €4.123 billion in 2015. Since then, it has acquired those types of mortgage debt portfolios, with an investment that amounts to around €7 billion.

Meanwhile, Servihabitat belongs to the fund Texas Pacific Group, (TPG), which has held a 51% stake in the servicer since September 2013, when CaixaBank sold it that percentage, holding onto the remaining 49%. It manages assets worth around €50 billion. Altamira is owned by Santander (15%) and the fund Apollo (85%), which acquired its stake in November 2013. Its assets in Spain are also worth around €50 billion. Solvia, owned by Sabadell, manages assets linked to real estate worth more than €31 billion.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Pablo Martín Simón, Laura Salces Acebes & Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sabadell Seeks Investors to Develop More Than 2 million m2 of Land

28 December 2017 – Expansión

The bank, through Solvia, has spun off the management of assets worth €600 million into a new company, which will be headquartered in Madrid.

Solvia, the real estate management company of Sabadell, wants to replicate the operation that it carried out in the hotel sector earlier this year, when it sold its hotel business to Blackstone for €630 million, generating profits of €55 million.

As such, the entity has decided to carve out its activity relating to the development of land into a new company called Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios. That company will manage 2.22 million m2 of land in total, equivalent to almost 300 football pitches. The construction of 4,000 homes, across more than 84 developments, is already underway.

The portfolio of assets under management amounts to €600 million, equivalent to approximately 15% of Solvia’s total income. That size places it in the second division in the sector, just behind the listed real estate companies, led by Metrovacesa, Neinor, Aedas and Vía Célere. The largest owner of land in Spain is Sareb.

This new company will be headquartered in Madrid and will be led by Francisco Pérez, former CEO of the Catalan property developer Vertix. “The idea is to grow hand in hand with the large overseas investors that are looking for high returns in Span, but which do not have any structure here. Most of the funding will come from outside of the country”, explains Javier García del Río, CEO of Solvia (pictured above).

The plans

Solvia Desarrollos will develop not only Sabadell’s land – the bank owns 83% of the portfolio – but also plots owned by family offices that the bank manages and the developments that Sareb is granting it. Solvia was one of the four entities chosen by the bad bank in 2014 to help it sell its homes to the general public. Specifically, it took over the problem loans proceeding from Bankia, Ceiss and Banco Gallego.

Sabadell has been developing land since 2013 and has grown a considerable business in that time. It was the first bank to get back on the horse after the real estate bubble burst. “Land is behaving magnificently, although we do not expect to see any abrupt growth. Areas that were very risky in 2013, such as Huelva, are no longer”, said García del Río.

The experts in the sector endorse his opinion. “The turning point in this market came in 2015 and 2016. This year has been exceptional, with more than 20,000 transactions involving land”, explains Samuel Población, National Director of Residential and Land at the consultancy firm CBRE. He calculates that property developers are capable of generating margins of between 18% and 22% from the construction of private housing blocks in Spain.

“The funds that left Spain have returned and investors are interested in buying land”, says José García Montalvo, Professor of Economics at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra and an expert in the real estate sector.

Solvia manages a portfolio of 148,000 real estate assets, whose value exceeds €31 billion. Last year, it generated a gross profit of €57.8 million and brokered the sale of 20,321 properties. Between 2011 and 2016, it sold more than 91,000 assets.

Sabadell granted new financing of €1.35 billion to property developers in 2016, up by 56%. Last year, it started granting property developer loans again in CAM’s area of influence after four years of restrictions imposed by Brussels.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Lander)

Translation: Carmel Drake