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28 March 2018
Aguirre Newman now has a single shareholder, Savills Overseas Holding Limited, and has changed its name to Savills Aguirre Newman, the group reported in the Business Registry.
Aguirre Newman bid farewell to its last year as an independent company. The firm recently merged into Savills under the name Savills Aguirre Newman, finishing 2017 with a turnover of 40 million euros, according to the British group’s annual report. Both companies, also just finalised, commercially, their merger after the absorption of Aguirre Newman by the Spanish subsidiary of Savills.
According to the Business Registry’s Official Gazette, Aguirre Newman now has a single shareholder, Savills Overseas Holding Limited, and changed its name to Savills Aguirre Newman. The company also appointed Santiago Aguirre and Satephen Newman as advisers, both founders of Aguirre Newman together with Mark Ridley, Borja Sierra and Rafael Merry del Val of Savills.
Aguirre Newman is beginning a new phase under Savills wing in Spain, bidding farewell to 2017, a year in which the group’s net turnover reached 40 million euros. According to the latest published data, the consultancy had gross revenues of 69 million euros in 2016.
In 2017, Savills, for its part, increased its profits by 19% to 91 million euros. The British group also achieved a global turnover of 1.8 billion euros, an increase of 11% over the previous year. Savills Investment Management, the group’s investment arm, increased its portfolio of real estate assets under management by 5%, to 16.536 billion euros at the end of 2017.
Rafael Merry del Val, CEO and Co-Chairman of Savills Aguirre Newman in Spain, during a presentation of the British group’s, stated that “the merger with Aguirre Newman places as in a new level of leadership in the local market.” The group’s goal for 2018 to “gain market share and attain growth from the beginning”, since, “with just over two months of partnership, we can already see the benefits of the merger.”
Savills Aguirre Newman, a new player in the sector
The British company reported to the London stock exchange on the last working day of last year that it had finally signed a purchase agreement with the Spanish real estate consultancy. The company had advised the LSE of its intention to acquire the company based in Madrid on July 28. Savills paid 67 million euros to take over the Aguirre Newman.
According to the purchase agreement, the British consultancy paid 42 million euros when the deal was finalised, and the rest will be paid in five million euros tranches over the next five years, reaching a total of the 25 million euros that had been agreed upon by both parties. Initially, Savills had planned to complete the purchase before November 30, but some administrative setbacks caused a brief delay.
The company, however, assured market sources that the deal would be finalised by the end of 2017. The British group reported the acquisition of the company on the last working day of the year. The need for both groups to sign their merger before the end of the year was also an administrative matter, since they wanted to conclude the transaction by the end of the year to begin operating as a single entity, Savills Aguirre Newman, in the new year.
The merger will lead to a significant number of changes to the combined group’s operations throughout Spain. The first one will involve the firm’s new headquarters in Madrid’s financial centre. Savills’ Spanish subsidiary is in the process of transferring its offices to one of the capital city’s principal skyscrapers. After lengthy negotiations, the new consultancy opted for the Castellana 81 building, better known as the BBVA tower. The company will take on 8,000 square meters of space, leasing a total of six floors from the GMP socimi, which owns the asset.
The BBVA tower, built in 1981, is one of the defining features of the Azca financial centre of the Spanish capital. GMP rehabilitated the asset after its purchase and, coincidentally, Aguirre Newman, in addition to CBRE, was one of the firms that led the search for new tenants for the property. The consultancy plans to move to its new offices as soon as the two companies’ merger is formalised.
Original Story: EjePrime – C. Pareja
Translation: Richard Turner