Tag: Xanadú

British Fund Intu Finalises Purchase Of Xanadú For c. €520M

10 March 2017 – Expansión

The British private equity fund Intu is finalising the completion of a record deal in the Spanish real estate market with the purchase of the Xanadú shopping centre (in Arroyomolinos, Madrid) from Ivanhoé Cambridge for around €520 million, according to market sources.

The purchase – which the fund has been negotiating in exclusivity since January – will represent the largest operation involving a shopping centre in the history of the Spanish market, whereby exceeding the €495 million that Deutsche Bank paid for Diagonal Mar (Barcelona) last August, the €451 million that Intu paid for Puerto Venecia (Zaragoza) and the €375 million that Klépierre paid for Plenilunio (Madrid).

CBRE and the law firm Clifford Chance have advised Intu during the operation, whilst Eastdil has advised Ivanhoé, which bought Xanadú from the Mills Corporation in 2006, along with two other shopping centres, one in Canada – Vaughan Mills (Ontario) and one in Scotland – Saint Enoch (Glasgow) – for a combined value of around €770 million.

The operation will be financed by Santander, Crédit Agricole, CaixaBank and BBVA with a loan to value (percentage value of the asset that is covered by the loan) of 40%.

In parallel, Intu is looking for a partner to whom to transfer 50% of the share capital in Madrid Xanadú 2003, the company that owns the shopping centre. Market sources point to the Canadian fund CPPIB as a possible ally. Both firms are already partners in two other Spanish shopping centres owned by Intu: Puerto Venecia (Zaragoza) and Parque Principado (Asturias).

One of the other candidates interested in acquiring the asset was TH Real Estate, but it was pipped at the post a few months ago by Intu, as revealed by Expansión on 31 January.

With this operation, Intu, which has plans to develop new shopping centres in Málaga, Valencia, Mallorca and Vigo, is strengthening its position in Spain and picking up one of the trophy shopping centres in Madrid to boot.

The shopping centre, constructed in 2003, has a total surface area of 153,695 m2 spread over two levels and 220 stores. Its tenants include Inditex, El Corte Inglés, Hipercor, Bricor, Decathlon, Primark and Apple.

Xanadú Madrid receives almost 13 million visitors per year and generates sales of around €230 million.

The shopping centre houses an indoor ski area – the only one in Spain and the largest in Europe – covering around 18,000 m2, as well as 15 cinema screens, a mini-golf course, a mini theme park, themed restaurants and a bowling alley.

In addition, Ivanhoé signed an agreement with Parques Reunidos last summer to construct an aquarium in Madrid Xanadú. Both companies reached an agreement with Viacom International Media Networks, a division of Viacom, to construct a theme park based on Nickelodeon characters in Xanadú.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Arroyo and R. Casado)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Intu To Buy Xanadú Shopping Centre In Madrid For €500M

1 February 2017 – Real Estate Press

Intu has put the highest offer on the table for the Xanadú shopping centre and, although the final terms of the deal have not yet been agreed, all indications suggest that the British group will end up acquiring the sought-after asset.  

Market sources say that the price of this operation (…) could reach as much as €500 million, with an initial yield of almost 4%. That figure would represent a milestone for the market and represents yet another example of the high degree of interest being shown in this kind of asset.

A price of €500 million would exceed the €495 million paid by Deutsche Bank when it purchased Diagonal Mar in Barcelona last year and would make it the largest shopping centre transaction ever closed in Spain.

The Xanadú shopping centre, which is located in the Madrilenian municipality of Arroyomolinos, was inaugurated in May 2003 and is owned by the Canadian group Ivanhoé Cambrdige, the real estate division of Caisse de Dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s largest institutional funds.

Ivanhoé bought Madrid Xanadú in 2006 from Mills Corporation, together with two other shopping centres, one in Canada – Vaughan Mills (Ontario) and one in Scotland – Saint Enoch (Glasgow) – for a combined value of around €770 million.

The shopping centre in Arroyomolinos has a total surface area of c. 180,000 m2, as well as almost 10,000 parking spaces, of which 500 are indoors.

Madrid Xanadú houses almost 220 stores, leased to tenants such as Hipercor, El Corte Inglés, Bricor, Apple, Hollister and Decathlon. It also offers leisure facilities, oriented towards families and young people, including a 15-screen cinema, a mini-golf course, a mini theme park, themed restaurants and a bowling alley.

The shopping centre also has an indoor ski area, the only one in Spain and the largest in Europe, with almost 18,000 m2 of slopes.

Moreover, last summer, Ivanhoé signed an agreement with the attraction park manager Parques Reunidos to construct an Aquarium in Madrid Xanadú. Both companies reached the agreement with Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN), a division of Viacom to construct a leisure centre with characters from Nickelodeon at Madrid Xanadú.

The aquarium, which will open its doors in 2017, will be the first in Madrid and the first in a shopping centre in Spain, whilst the Nickelodeon leisure centre will open its doors at the beginning of 2018 and will be the first of its kind in Madrid. Madrid Xanadú is located fifteen minutes from the centre of the capital by car and is well connected to all points in the Community of Madrid.

Original story: Real Estate Press

Translation: Carmel Drake

GreenOak Puts All Of Its Logistics Assets Up For Sale

29 November 2016 – El Confidencial

Early in the summer of 2015, the opportunistic fund GreenOak surprised the market by announcing its unbridled appetite for the Spanish logistics market. In June of that year, the vehicle funded and managed by John Carrafiell announced that it had just purchased five logistics assets in the Community of Madrid, with a combined surface area of 200,000 m2, and that it had agreed to acquire another 100,000 m2.

Over the next few months, the fund completed a barrage of operations, involving the acquisition of, amongst others: a 14,000 m2 platform, which became the largest logistics operation in the País Vasco in 2015; a 30,000 m2 asset in Toledo, leased to Schwepees; the Michelin logistics platform in Seseña, which has a surface area of 47,000 m2; and a portfolio covering 144,320 m2 spread across several properties in Zaragoza and Massalvés (Valencia), which it purchased from Prologis.

Thus, in just 12 months, GreenOak fulfilled its objective of acquiring a portfolio covering 500,000 m2, but rather than develop it, the US fund has now decided to put it up for sale, and whereby take advantage of the strong appetite from institutional investors and specialists in the sector. According to several sources familiar with the sale, the fund has opened a formal sales process, whose first key milestone was recorded last week, with the presentation of preliminary offers from interested parties.

The US firm Eastdil Secured, a subsidiary of Wells Fargo, is coordinating the process, according to the same sources, who point out that this advisor was also chosen by the Canadian fund Ivanhoe to coordinate the sales process of Xanadú, one of the largest shopping centres in Spain, which was sold for around €500 million.

GreenOak’s decision to divest its entire logistics portfolio is seen in the market as an operation by an opportunistic fund, which knew how to buy cheaply and which has decided to take advantage of the interest from more stable investors to generate rapid capital gains. The consideration for the operation is expected to exceed €200 million, compared with the figure of around €125 million that GreenOak has invested to build the portfolio.

Opportunistic buyer

GreenOak signed its first major property purchase in Spain in 2014, when it acquired seven shopping centres from the Dutch group Vastned Retail for €160 million. (…).

It then went onto buy the building located at number 77 on Calle Fuencarral, which it acquired from the General Social Security Treasrury for €21 million; followed by the Sevilla Factory shopping centre, which it bought for €12 million; an office building in Port Cornellá (Barcelona), which it purchased for €10.1 million; and four buildings in the Avalon Business Park (Madrid) and another one in Arroyo de la Vega (Alcobendas), on which it spent more than €55 million in total, according to the figures disclosed in the annual accounts of Gore Spain, the Socimi through which the fund channels its investments in our country.

The icing on the cake for GreenOak came in June this year, when it acquired the Las Mercedes Business Park from Standard Life. The property is located on the outskirts of Madrid, next to the A-2 motorway and comprises an 80,000 m2 complex with 10 buildings, of which nine are used for offices, with the tenth used for the provision of general services.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ivanhoé Puts Madrid’s Xanadú Shopping Centre Up For Sale

14 September 2016 – Cinco Días

It is going to be one of the largest operations in the real estate market. The Canadian giant Ivanhoé Cambridge has begun the process to prepare the sale of the Xanadú de Arroyomolinos shopping centre (in Madrid), one of the largest five shopping centres in Spain. The aim is to close the transaction during the first half of 2017.

Several real estate brokers have already registered their interest and, in turn, have started to sound out potential investors with high purchasing power, given that it is expected that the operation price will exceed €500 million; that would represent a record figure for a transaction involving a shopping centre in Spain.

Madrid Xanadú was inaugurated in 2003. The property was developed by a joint venture between the US multi-national The Mills and the Spanish company PGC (Parcelatoria Gonzalo Chacón), which sold its stake to its American partner a year later. The real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge acquired the centre in 2007 for €770 million, in an operation that included two other retail complexes in the UK and Canada.

Located 29 km away from the centre of Madrid, Xanadú was an innovation more than a decade ago as it included an artificial ski slope, open all year round. The centre has a gross leasable and leisure area measuring 152,000 sqm, exceeded only by Puerto Venecia (Zaragoza), Marineda City (A Coruña) and Parquesur (in Leganés, Madrid), according to data from the Spanish Association of Shopping Centres and Retail Parks (AECC). The centre is home to range of stores including the Inditex group, H&M, Apple and Primark. Hipercor and El Corte Inglés also have shops there, although those assets would fall outside of this transaction.

The search for investors

Various source in the sector have confirmed that Ivanhoé Cambridge has commissioned the US real estate broker Eastdil Secured to start designing the sales process. It is likely that the firm will look for a partner with a presence in Spain (one of the large specialist consultancy firms) with more knowledge of the local market. The aim is that the process to look for possible buyers will begin between October and November so that an agreement can be reached from the beginning of next year onwards.

Eastdil Secured was in fact responsible for selling the Diagonal Mar shopping centre in Barcelona this summer to Deutsche Bank for €493 million, in a record deal that demonstrated investors’ confidence in the economic recovery in Spain and in the local real estate sector after the harsh years of the crisis, which began in 2008.

Expected to fetch at least €450 million

The various sources disagree with respect to the possible price of this asset, saying that it could range from €450 million to more than €500 million. In its favour, this shopping centre is one of the largest in the country, it houses many of the major retailers, and it also offers a vast leisure space. But, unlike Diagonal Mar, it is a long way from the city centre. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Ivanhoé Cambridge explained that the firm does not comment on “market speculation” about the investment strategy.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake