Portugal’s Novo Banco, created from the collapse of former Banco Espirito Santo, has successfully offloaded a portfolio of non-performing loans (NPL) worth a total of €2.1Bn. Known as “Project Nata”, the portfolio containing 102,000 contracts has been purchased by the investment funds KKR and Lx Investment Partners.

The process is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019 states the bank in a note to the stock market commission CMVM. “Novo Banco informs that after the completion of a competitive sale process, Novo Banco and Best have signed a purchase and sale contract for Non-Performing Loans (NPL’s) and related assets (Project Nata) to a consortium of funds managed by KKR and LX Investment Partners”.

The sale, originally announced in mid-December, is the largest sale of Non-Performing Loans ever in Portugal.

However, the actual value of the portfolio is greater than the €1.7Bn initially estimated, in other words an additional €400 million.

Taking into account the value published by Novo Banco, the amount of loan defaults on the bank’s books should fall to around €6.3Bn from the €6.7Bn it has been before the sale of this tranche of debt.

In addition to Project “Nata”, the bank led by António Ramalho is now preparing to sell a second credit default portfolio Project ‘Albatros’ in Spain. This is a collection of NPLs with an estimated value of €400 million in an operation that should be completed by the end of the year.

Novo Banco also has sold a portfolio of 9,000 properties to the US fund Anchorage Capital Group for €716 million with the management of the portfolio handed to the servicing group Finsolutia and Hipoges.

 
Original story: Essential Business
Photo: Novo Banco
Edition: Prime Yield