Tag: property developers

Sankaty Finalises Purchase Of 40 Large Loans From Bankia

6 May 2015 – Expansión

During 2015, Bankia has become an important focus point for international funds. Along with the sale of properties amounting to €4,800 million, the nationalised entity has launched three other large sales processes to divest non-strategic assets: one contains hotel debt – Project Castle; another involves problem mortgages – Project Wind; and the third includes large loans to real estate companies – Project Commander. The last of these is likely to close first, since the US fund Sankaty, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, is now in exclusive negotiations to seal the purchase and may sign an agreement in the next few days.

If the agreement comes to fruition, the investor will acquire 170 loans granted to 39 companies linked to the property sector. Of those, 31 are property developers that have filed for bankruptcy or liquidation. The portfolio include several loans granted to companies such as the Catalan firm Promociones Habitat.

Most of the loans are syndicated and bilateral, secured by rural land and industrial warehouses. The nominal value of the portfolio amounts to €500 million. Sankaty already acquired one portfolio from Bankia last year, together with the hotel investment giant Starwood. They paid the bank €400 million for hotel and real estate loans.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Socimis Are The Star Players In The RE Sector In 2015

22 April 2015 – Expansión

The value of companies in the sector has increased by 30% on average in 2015 / The Socimis Merlin, Lar España and Hispania are the analysts’ favourites to benefit from the recovery in the property sector.

The real estate sector is gathering strength on the stock exchange. So far in 2015, (the share values of) companies linked to the property sector have increased by 30% on average on the stock market.

Experts think that now is a good time to invest in these securities, given the strong economic outlook for Spain and the signs of recovery in their businesses. Investment in the real estate sector amounted to €2,463 million during the first quarter (of 2015), i.e. three times as much as during the same period last year. Analysts do not rule out that investment this year may exceed the record high of €11,470 million reached in 2007.

Factors in its favour

“Several factors point to an improvement of the sector: the rise in mortgage lending, the increase in (the volume of) sales, the reduction in the housing stock, and the increase in house prices”, says Victoria Torre, at Self Bank.

Nevertheless, the experts are not convinced: not all companies represent (good) investment opportunities. For Bankinter, it is still too early to back the traditional real estate companies and property developers, whose securities are small in size and have scarce liquidity. For that entity, the best opportunities in the sector are the Socimis (listed real estate investment companies). One of the major attractions of these companies is their returns: they pay out at least 80% of their profits to their shareholders and their returns per dividend can reach 4%.

The favourites in the sector

Merlin Properties is Bankinter’s favourite listed Socimi because it considers that it has an established investment portfolio, visibility over earnings and acceptable levels of liquidity and capitalisation. Juan Moreno, at Ahorro, also backs that company, whose (share price) has increased by 29.88% during the year. “Although (its shares) are trading slightly above our valuation (they closed trading yesterday at €11.76), we consider that the current environment of excess liquidity and low interest rates justify its current prices. The Socimi’s differentiating factor is its size, which allows it to access transactions for which there is less competition”, he explains.

Moreover, the returns on its dividends amount to 3.8%, i.e. the highest in the real estate sector. The six companies that track its value are advising (investors) to buy its shares. UBS gives it an upside potential of 6%, up to €12.41.

Another one of the options preferred by investors is Lar España. The company is a good way of betting on the recovery in the market for shopping centres. “It has just acquired the As Termas shopping centre for €67 million, which will help it to grow and boost its results”, says Remo Bosch, from the firm RBL Asesores. Lar’s share price has increased by 16% in 2015 and it has an upside potential of 10%, according to the consensus of analysts consulted by Bloomberg.

Moreno also thinks that Hispania is attractive. “It is proposing transactions that generate value, such as its agreement with Barceló, which in our opinion will generate €1.90 per share for every shareholder”, he says. He gives its shares a target price of €13.10, i.e. 4.5% above yesterday’s closing price.

Original story: Expansión (by D. Esperanza)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Deloitte Strengthens Its Financial-RE Team

22 April 2015 – Expansión

Deloitte hires nine new professionals / The consultancy firm has recruited a team from Quadratia, a company that specialises in the residential RE sector

Deloitte expects to see a boom in the sale of homes and land to overseas funds; and it wants to become a leader in that market. The consultancy firm has recently strengthened its financial-real estate team by hiring new professionals from the specialist company Quadratia. The new recruits include the Managing Partner of that consultancy firm, Gonzalo Gallego, who joins as a Real Estate partner in the Financial Advisory team.

This move comes as a result of the belief that following the purchase of real estate platforms, shopping centres, individual buildings and loan portfolios, the opportunistic funds are going to focus their attention on the residential market this year and next. “We are seeing an increasing focus by real estate investors on the residential market, where they are interested in buying land, homes and other properties on the coast”, said Enrique Gutierrez, partner in the Transaction and Restructuring Advisory team at Deloitte. Gutierrez is responsible for the department where increasing weight is being given to the real estate sector. The RE team at Deloitte is led by the partner Alberto Valls, who Gallego will report into. In total, Deloitte’s Transactions team comprises more than 300 professionals.

Valls explains that, in the same way as has happened with other types of assets, “history is repeating itself and there is a lot of conviction amongst opportunistic investors that now is the time to enter the residential sector”. These types of funds are specialists in acquiring assets that carry higher risk and therefore, represent opportunities for extracting higher returns. “In a year from now, higher returns will be obtained. Once the situation stabilises, other more conservative, institutional investors will enter (the market)”, he adds.

In this context, investors are focusing their attention on banking assets: “(Many of the banks’) balance sheets are still fully loaded with debt from property developers and other foreclosed assets, and there are 400 funds willing to invest in Spain. No other segment has as much potential as the residential market”, says Gallego.

The banks are adopting two approaches to unblock the real estate plughole: the sale of homes in their networks, which accelerated every month in 2014 thanks to the mortgage war; and the sale of portfolios to funds. Deloitte estimates that there have been 30 transactions involving the transfer of (property) developer loans over the last year and a half.

The consultancy firm explains that the banks take three parameters into account when they put these types of portfolios on the market: time, cost and price. If the result of this equation shows that it will be more expensive to foreclose assets in the future than sell them at a discount now, then they put them on the market.

Original story: Expansión (by J. Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Real Estate Starts To Drive GDP Again After 7 Years In Decline

6 April 2015 – El Mundo

On the demand side, household consumption and the recovery in investment in the construction sector are the components that drive growth. And, on the supply side, construction has reappeared on the scene again after seven years of harsh decreases. The same elements with which the crisis started in 2007.

In light of this data, the recovery is therefore bracing itself with identical components to those that led to two recessions, in particular the return of property.

The fact is that, although it is likely that errors from previous periods will not be committed, for example, the abolition of tax deductions, incentives for developers and easing of credit, housing has had an important impact both on the banking sector, as well as on the economy as a whole. For this reason, many analysts think that the production model of the Spanish economy should be more diversified and depend to a lesser extent on construction.

Most of the indicators suggest that the property market has been stabilising since 2014 and is now brimming with strength. The recovery in the gross added value of the sector is already materialising. After 24 consecutive quarters of negative growth, with annual decreases of more than 15% in 2010 and 2012, the sector recorded its first, albeit meagre, upturn (0.02%) in the third quarter of 2014 and bounced back forcefully in the fourth quarter, growing by 3.4%.

All of this has meant that construction at current prices (€53,829 million) accounted for 5.1% of GDP. It still only accounts half of what it represented at the start of the crisis in 2007 (10.1%). But experts expect a rapid acceleration.

In terms of investment in construction, possibly catapulted by the activation of public works in the face of new electoral commitments and also by the increase in building (activity), the sector recorded its first positive annual growth rate since the crisis (and the second quarterly increase) after 26 quarters of consecutive decreases. Therefore, the decline is deemed to have come to an end.

Specifically, residential investment increased by 0.4% in inter-quarterly terms during the last three months of 2014, whereby completing four quarters of gains. According to the Bank of Spain, all of this seems to mark “a change in the cycle for this component of demand”. Moreover, the indicators available from the first quarter (of 2015) point to a continuation of this trend in a context in which new building permits recorded a new upturn.

Meanwhile, the notarial statistics show that house transactions increased by 20% at the end of the year, with an average transaction volume of 30,000 homes per month. This recovery is concentrated in the segment of used homes and is continuing to benefit from the increase in purchases by overseas citizens. Now Spanish citizens have joined the drive to make house purchases.

Other indicators in the real estate market also show the same trend, with an increase in house sales and in house prices. Thus, in 2014, for the first time since the crisis started, the segment experienced a positive average annual increase (0.3%) following decreases of 10.6% and 13.7% in 2013 and 2012.

But, as Santiago Carbó and Francisco Rodríguez note in a report prepared for Funcas about the start of the recovery in the market, the real estate and construction sector “have unquestionable importance for the economic growth of Spain”. For this, they say that now that the economy is recovering “the role of (the) construction (sector) will become significant, sooner or later”. Above all, it is important for the generation of employment. In this way, construction contributed more than any other sector to the creation of more than 96,000 new Social Security memebrs in February; construction alone accounted for 26,000 jobs, i.e. more than a quarter of the total. The number of social security contributors has returned to one million (people); in 2006, there were 2.5 million. In terms of employment, the number of people has decreased by 62,000 with respect to the same month last year.

The emergence of the construction sector in (terms of GDP) growth will be more important this year and in the future. According to the Bank of Spain, the recovery of the added value of construction companies has continued during the first months of 2015. Meanwhile, Funcas indicates that, as a result of the more vigorous than expected behaviour of consumption and construction, GDP (growth) should reach 3%, versus the 2.8% that the Bank of Spain currently predicts.

Original story: El Mundo (by Francisco Núñez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Top 6 Banks Lose €15,300M From Real Estate In 4 Years

10 March 2015 – El Economista

The real estate sector continues to be a major problem for financial institutions despite the economic recovery. The largest 6 banks lost another €3,027 million last year from their main property development companies, which together hold the bulk of the foreclosed assets, due to unpaid loans.

Following the results reported in 2014, Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Sabadell, Popular and Bankinter have now suffered losses of more than €15,300 million in the last four years from their real estate arms.

Nevertheless, the rate of loss is shrinking due to the stabilisation of (house) prices, which have decreased by 40% on average, and the increased sales of homes and, even land. This is in addition to the provisions that have already been made, primarily in 2012, when the Government forced financial institutions to increase their coverage ratios substantially in the face of doubts in the market over the real status of the system’s balance sheet.

Thus, the deficit reported by these companies decreased by 36% with respect to 2013 and by 45% with respect to 2012, but it continues to be 43% higher than in 2011.

The real estate arm of CaixaBank, BuildingCenter, recorded the greatest losses in 2014, according to data published by the entities. Specifically, it generated a loss of €1,280 million. The Catalan group had to clean up its balance sheet by €1,900 million in the middle of last year, through a capital injection to adjust its balance sheet. Its losses have amounted to €3,000 million in the last two years.

Diminishing impact

Indeed, the Catalan group is the least optimistic about the property situation in our country. At the end of January, its CEO, Gonzalo Gortázar, predicted that the accounts of the real estate company “would continue to be significantly impacted” this year and next. Although, he did point out that the impact should diminish.

Canvives, owned by Popular, was the property developer that recorded the smallest losses: €52 million. The company, which used to be owned by Pastor, was merged into the group chaired by Ángel Ron. The deficit of this subsidiary has decreased by 91% in two years after the clean up. Popular holds another large real estate company in its portfolio, Aliseda, which generated additional losses of €146 million last year.

According to its management tem, Popular managed to sell property at a price slightly higher than its book value, after applying provisions, and it doubled its turnover (from this activity), to generate €1,500 million.

The bank, chaired by Ángel Ron, expects to increase the sale of property by 33% this year, as it gradually reduces this type of asset. It was the last entity to launch an aggressive price policy and it is intensifying (its efforts) to reduce the volume of homes and land it holds.

Santander’s property developer generated the some of the smallest losses last year. Just €119 million. This company’s deficit over the last four years amounts to €1,788 million in total.

Santander, like Popular and CaixaBank, is supported by funds, which strengthen the sale of their properties. The three banks have got rid of the majority of the capital (they held) in the platforms they use to manage this type of asset, with the objective of outsourcing the service and achieving gains with which to shore up their capital resources.

The strategy followed by BBVA, Sabadell and Bankinter is somewhat different; they have retained the overall management of their foreclosed properties, although in the case of the first two, the option of finding a specialist industrial partner has not been ruled out. Under no circumstances do these entities expect to partner up with any funds.

The volume of foreclosed assets increases

Although the volume of sales has accelerated, the balance of foreclosed assets is continuing to increase; although if we exclude the stakes held in property-related companies, this balance decreases for the first time since the crisis. In this sense, last year, Santander and BBVA succeeded in reducing the volume of homes and land in their portfolios. The former reduced its balance by 1.8%, to €7,851 million gross (excluding provisions), whilst the latter decreased it by 5%, to reach €13,016 million.

The six listed banks, excluding Bankia, which transferred the majority of its properties to Sareb during the financial bailout, together held foreclosed assets amounting to €70,000 million at the end of 2014, including the stakes they owned in property development companies. This means that the balance had increased by 9% with respect to 2013.

The forecasts made by the entities themselves indicate that all of this stock will have been liquidated within five or six years. Santander, for example, expects to decrease its balance by 20% each year, which means that it may have got rid of the entire volume of homes and land in its portfolio within five years. However, this will all depend on the economic conditions in our country and the recovery of the property sector, which is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Original story: El Economista (by Fernando Tadeo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

The Top 7 Banks Reduce Their Exposure To Toxic RE Assets

3 March 2015 – El País

In 2014, loans to property developers and the overall volume of unpaid debt held by the top 7 banks decreased significantly, whereas the number of homes and plots of land they held increased.

Spain’s real estate bubble was largely a credit bubble. The excess amounts committed during the boom years subsequently gave way to a severe economic and financial crisis that forced Spain to ask its European partners to come to the rescue, to clean up the majority of its savings banks. The large banks were not immune from these excesses, but their higher levels of diversification, their capacity to attract private capital and their more professional management limited the damage (they suffered). All of this meant that even the healthy entities have had to undertake long and expensive clean up processes, which are still on-going for the most part. As part of this process, Spain’s listed banks managed to reduce their overall volume of problem real estate assets for the first time in 2014, according to data from their recently published annual reports.

The seven banks that form part of the IBEX 35 index (Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankia, Sabadell, Popular and Bankinter) closed last year with non-performing and substandard loans to property developers and unpaid homes, plots of land and other real estate assets amounting to €125,000 million. That balance represented a reduction of €7,000 million compared with the previous year. These are gross figures. If we look at the volume of provisions, the volume of as yet uncovered toxic risk decreased to just under €65,000 million, having decreased by €4,000 million in one year.

Overall, the reduction in toxic assets was exclusively driven by loans, since the real estate assets held by the banks (homes, developments, plots of land and shares held in real estate companies) continued to increase despite the fact that the entities have also been stepping on the accelerator in terms of sales. The banks are still seizing, foreclosing and receiving deeds in lieu of payment, for more properties than they are managing to sell.

A large proportion of the debt from the bubble is completing its cycle in this way. The banks have increasingly less exposure in terms of loans to property developers; the amount held by these seven entities decreased from €85,179 million to €68,086 million during the year. Furthermore, the volume of loans to property developers classified as normal, or up to date, also decreased. Now, only €18,000 million of these loans are considered as healthy, i.e. a quarter of the total. A large proportion of the loans went from being healthy to substandard or non-performing. And from there, to being written off (when loans are removed from the balance sheet and 100% of the losses arising from non-payment are provisioned) or to being classified as foreclosed properties (due to the foreclosure of the property or the handing over of deeds in lieu of payment). In 2013, only the volume of healthy loans decreased; doubtful and foreclosed debt increased, i.e. the volume of toxic assets grew. In 2014, the volume of non-performing loans decreased so significantly that, although the number of properties increased, the overall volume of “potentially problematic” real estate assets (as defined by the Bank of Spain) decreased for the first time. Until now, the only reduction in toxic assets (or rather transfer) happened when the banks transferred much of their developer exposure to Sareb, the bad bank.

In terms of properties, the largest increase related to plots of land, the asset that it is hardest to market. The banks have made provisions against almost 60% of the original value (of the plots of land they hold), but some plots have lost even more of their value and the entities are still reluctant to sell at a loss. There is barely any demand, transactions are relatively scarce and the banks are still seizing land from property developers unable to repay their loans. Thus, the volume of land in the hands of the seven IBEX 35 banks closed 2014 at a record high of €28,127 million, up €2,500 million compared with the end of 2013. Given the difficulties the banks are facing to find developers to purchase this land for construction, they are starting to adopt formulas that allow them to share the risk with the developers in exchange for providing the land.

The number of homes coming from from unpaid mortgages is also increasing. Specifically, the volume increased by €1,000 million last year, to €14,161 million. In this case, the increase was largely due to a delay in foreclosures. Procedures to seize homes that began at the height of the crisis are only now reaching their conclusion, even though the mortgage default rate seems to have already hit its peak.

The picture is also very different between the entities. Bankinter holds the badge of honour; it was the only one of the seven entities that avoided the temptation of the housing bubble. Its exposure to the sector was extremely low and it has hardly any doubtful debts or foreclosed properties. Next in line is Bankia, although in this case, the clean up of its balance sheet is less impressive: since it was achieved through the transfer of the bulk of its toxic assets to Sareb and the acceleration of the provisions against those assets that remained on its balance sheet.

Of the major banks, the entity that has done the most to clean up its real estate exposure is Santander. Its toxic property assets now account for only 15.3% of its lending to the private sector in Spain and just 1.5% of its consolidated assets. One step below are CaixaBank and BBVA. The entity chaired by Isidro Fainé has the highest level of provisions and the bank led by Francisco González benefits greatly from the international diversification of its business.

Sabadell is a special case. It appears to have high exposure to toxic assets, but a significant portion is covered through an asset protection scheme (that it acquired) when it purchased CAM. The entity with the most work left to do on the clean up front is Popular. Even though it has boosted the sales of homes, it has the highest volume of toxic assets and the lowest level of coverage of any of the seven entities.

Original story: El País

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s New ‘Property Kings’

2 March 2015 – El Mundo

2006 was a key year for Fernando Martín. Not only did the Chairman of Martinsa hold the presidency of Real Madrid for a short time, he also acquired the real estate company Fadesa for €4,000 million. Two years later, the burst of the (real estate) bubble put an end to his reign. Since then, the businessman has tried to resist (his downfall) until this week, when the banks and Sareb put an end to his adventures, by plunging Martinsa into bankruptcy. His creditors say that throughout the bankruptcy negotiations, Martín has demanded that he continue in his role as Chairman of the company and also retain his company car, his secretary and his salary of around €1.5 million, even though the company’s activity has been minimal.

With this defeat falls the last of the property lords who led the Spanish economy’s most important sector during the boom years, with negotiation tactics that many associate with lobster lunches and (VIP) boxes at football matches.

However, Martín’s fall coincides with the rebirth of the empire. Last year, institutional investors closed transactions amounting to €14,000 million in Spain (a volume of activity that was only exceeded in 2006 and 2007) and data from the housing market also shows that the property sector has turned the corner towards recovery. In fact, in 2014, the number of new mortgages taken out increased for the first time, after six years in decline.

This rebirth is accompanied by new businessmen with profiles more akin to those of bankers than (property) developers. The property kings’ successors are more used to having canopes for lunch, in true British style, and many of the important decisions about the future developments that will see the return of cranes to Spain’s landscape, are no longer being made in (VIP) boxes at the Bernabéu, but instead in offices in Madrid, the City of London, Dallas, New York and Beijing.

Former developers, such as Fernando Martín, Enrique Bañuelos (Astroc) and Rafael Santamaría (Reyal Urbis) have now made way for Wang Jianlin (Wanda), Ismael Clemente (Merlin Properties), Juan Pepa (Lone Star) and Concha Osácar (Azora).

These are executives who no longer depend on the banks to finance their projects; instead they are backed by large insurance companies, sovereign funds and even highly qualified investors, such as George Soros and Carlos Slim.

“We are facing a paradigm shift. During the boom (years), developers wanted to make more than they were able to and they focused on stocking up on land, due to the peculiarities of that raw material. However, (property) development is like manufacturing and no manufacturer purchases (his) raw materials 10 years in advance. When we hit economic difficulties, that model collapsed. Now, we are seeing different management and development models exist side by side. We are moving towards a more professional model, in which fewer developers compete, with stronger brands”, explains Luis Ruiz Bartolomé, co-author of the book ‘Return, property, return’ (‘Vuelve, ladrillo, vuelve’).

Under this model, the large investors, cooperatives and local developers that have managed to survive the difficult years, are going to co-exist. All of them will compete with a different mentality and with new ways of managing assets.

“The new players in the real estate sector will have to analyse the current key factors (effectively) to enable them to have a more global profile through increased specialisation and professionalization”, says the partner responsible for Real Estate at KPMG, Javier López Torres.

Wang Jianlin (pictured above)

On his trips to Spain, the Chinese tycoon has enjoyed evenings at the Teatro Real, but he also likes football. In fact, his first investments in this country were in the Torre España – a building he bought from Santander – and a stake in Atletico de Madrid. Now, the owner of the Wanda Group wants to launch the development of the so-called Wang mega-complex, a residential and leisure park that may be constructed on land that used to house former barracks in Madrid. Nevertheless, to date, the Asian millionaire’s investments in Spain have merely represented a token gesture, in the context of the global figures for his real estate business. The Wanda Group is the largest land-owner in China and it is constructing the largest residential skyscraper in London, next to the Thames. According to the Chinese press, Jianlin is also considering the purchase of the AC Milan football team.

Jaime Echegoyen

It is likely that when the Chairman of Sareb was CEO at Bankinter and Head of Barclays in Spain, he never imagined that it would end up holding the reins of the bad bank. This banker, who always works with office door open, is responsible for managing the real estate giant that was created in 2012 with 200,000 assets (80% financial and 20% property) amounting to €50,781 million. Echegoyen’s team is working on the completion of 1,000 homes (which it received ‘unfinished’ from the banks) across 52 sites. In addition, it is studying the development of some of the 5,000 plots of land that it received as inheritance, to be able to better market them before 2027, when the semi-public company will have to be dissolved.

Juan Pepa

This Argentine, who lives in London, is the Managing Director of the North American fund Lone Star and in 2013, he managed to convince US investors to back Spanish property. When Pepa comes to Spain and announces that his is going to launch the largest developer in the country this Spring, he does so with a level of enthusiasm that may surprise (people) after the hard times experienced in recent years. “We are going to fill the country with cranes”, he likes to declare. In recent years, Lone Star has purchased the real estate company Neinor from Kutxabank and Eurohypo’s loan business (together with JP Morgan) to launch this project. With a financial background and an MBA, Pepa plays polo and is the patron of the Pro Alvear Foundation, which works to promote education and technology in the La Pampa province of Argentina. This executive, who is less than 40 years-old, does not like the press referring to his fund as a vulture; he assures them that he has not come to Spain with a short-term view and although, he does not provide any details about his project, he says that the proof will be in the fact that it will generate value for the Spanish economy.

Ismael Clemente

Also a banker by trade – he used to work at Deustche Bank for example – but more closely related to property than Echegoyen and Pepa, Clemente founded Magic Real Estate during the worst year of the crisis (2012) and now is the head of Merlin Properties, the Socimi that debuted on the stock exchange in an IPO that raised €1,250 million.

George Soros and Carlos Slim

The tycoon who devalued the pound in 1992 and the Mexican multi-millionaire represent the many international investors who want to get involved in the recovery of the (real estate) sector through their financial investments. Soros is one of Hispania’s shareholders, whilst Slim has taken a stake in FCC. From there, he wants to acquire Realia to complete his business empire, which includes valuable assets from around the world, in many different sectors; América Móvil is one of the jewels in his crown.

Leopoldo Moreno

In addition to the businesses of large investors, cooperatives are also proving themselves to be a successful formula for development, as banks have closed the (financing) taps. The CEO of Ibosa has known how to take advantage of this model with numerous developments in the Community of Madrid.

Santos Montoro

This businessman from Murcia is a good example of how a family developer can compete in the (new) real estate model that has been imposed by the investment funds. In fact, his company, Monthisa (which was created in 1968) has managed to reinvent itself during this crisis to form a partnership with the fund H.I.G. to manage the Bull portfolio, a batch of apartments and garages that the US vehicle purchased from Sareb.

Enrique Bañuelos

After the fiasco involving Astroc, this deposed king has resumed his activity in London. From the City he wants to develop (property) in Spain through his new company called Veremonte and participate in BCNWorld, the tourism and leisure macro project that the Catalan authorities are looking to build

Original story: El Mundo (by María Vega)

Translation: Carmel Drake