NPL&REO News

Cerberus appoints Arrow Capital to manage €750 million logistics portfolio

12 April, 2019

Arrow Capital Partners has been appointed by an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management to assist in the management of an €750 million portfolio of light industrial and logistics assets in Spain.

The industrial portfolio includes over 1,000 light industrial and logistics assets totalling approximately 5,000,000 sqm located close to Spain’s major cities and transport hubs with circa 60% within the Barcelona and Madrid metropolitan areas. The portfolio will be managed by Arrow Capital Partners’ Spanish team established in early 2018, based in Madrid and led by Howard Barnes.

Robert Falls, Managing Director at Cerberus European Servicing, Ltd, Cerberus’ affiliated advisor with regards to asset management, property management, and loan servicing platform, commented: «We are pleased to be partnering again with the team at Arrow Capital Partners to assist us with the management of our industrial portfolio in Spain. We’ve developed a great relationship with Arrow Capital Partners over the years through various European mandates and we look forward to leveraging their expertise and capabilities in the Spanish market.»

Howard Barnes, Head of Spain at Arrow Capital Partners, says: «As the Spanish economy continues to recover from the financial crisis, we are seeing some excellent entry opportunities, particularly for us as we are looking to acquire light industrial and logistics assets of over €200 million in the next year or so. As growth in Spain’s e-commerce sector continues off a low base, a marked supply / demand imbalance has developed in the light industrial and logistics sectors, increasing rents and capital values.»

Author: IPE Real Assets
Photo: iStock.com/Ron Full
Edition: Prime Yield

Cerberus wants to take €350 million with Gescobro sale

22 March, 2019

Cerberus Capital Management has just put the sales signal over Gescobro, its credit recovery company in Spain. According to several sources listened by La Información, the North-American fund is completing the five-year disposal programme established when it acquired the credit recovery society from the Spanish fund Miura, back in 2014.

The same media added that Ceberus aim is to obtain around €350 million with the deal, although the final price will depend on how the sales process will go on. Alantra is advising Cerberus on the sales process, which is expected to last until the end of first semester, at least. The non-bidding offers phase is now open.

The sales value is based on the significant portfolio of bad credit acquired by the company over the last few years from the main Spanish financial entities, and whose gross asset value totals more than €8.6 billion. More precisely, Gescobro owns 12 unsecured credit portfolios with a gross book value of €8.3 billion and other two secured credit portfolio with a gross nominal value around €300 million.

Estimated recovery procedures pending amount to almost €600 million over the next 15 years.

Besides, Gescobro has “servicing” agreements with the majority of the main Spanish banks, being responsible to manage and recovery their non performing credits. In total, these business area means other €3.5 billion third party owned under management. Among these last ones, there is the recently acquired «Mauser Project».

Established in 1980, Gescobro is specialist in non-secured credit from SMEs.

Original Story: La información | Pepe Bravo
Photo: Cerberus online
Edition:Prime Yield

Bain Capital raises €1.25 billion fund to purchase European Bank Loans

18 March, 2019

Bain Capital’s credit arm raised 1.25 billion euros for a new fund to purchase European bank loans, according to information given to Bloomberg by a person familiar with the matter.

Bain Capital Credit’s new Special Situations Europe fund will target banks’ secured debt, non-performing loan portfolios and real estate assets, said the person, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. The money raised for the fund, the first dedicated to European soured loans at Bain, exceeded an initial target of €1 billion, the person said.

Bloomberg contacted an external spokeswoman for Bain, who declined to comment on the matter.

Last year alone, Bain acquired nine bank loan portfolios across Europe, in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, with a gross book value of more than €4 billion, revealed the same source. Bain Capital has $105 billion in asset under management, according to its website.

European lenders’ efforts to clean up their balance sheets since the global financial crisis have created a burgeoning market for trading non-performing loan exposures.

While more than a third below their peak, Italian lenders still had €222 euros of NPL on their books as of June, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers data. Greek lenders are also seeking to slash €89 billion of bad debt from their books, equivalent to about half of the country’s annual economic output.

Original Story:Bloomberg | Luca Casiraghi
Photo: Bain Capital
Edition:Prime Yield

Bankia hires KPMG to sell 3 NPL and REO portfolios worth €1 billion

6 March, 2019

Bankia is on track to meet one year in advance the goal of freeing itself from the real estate heavy burden that is still in its balance sheets, by hiring KPMG to sell 3 portfolios involving nonperforming loans (NPL) and real estate owned (REO) assets worth €1 billion. The goal is to complete the sales in the mid-year.

The Spanish bank nationalized in 2012 set the goal to clean from its sheets almost €9 billion in nonperforming assets related to real estate between 2018-2020. Along 2018 alone Bankia sold bad assets worth €6 billion. And this year goes in the right direction to achieve its aim a year before the scheduled.

In a more advanced sales stage, one of the portfolios that are now in the market includes developer’s NPL with a gross book value of €500 milion. The second portfolio to be put for sale involves unsecured NPL worth €200 million. According to El Confidencial, a third portfolio is likely to enter in the market soon, constituted of REO (most of it land and dwellings) in the value of hundreds million euros, whose dimension is yet to define.

Original Story: El Confidencial | Jorge Zuloaga
Photo: Bankia
Translation and Edition: Prime Yield

Haya Real Estate launches the Marconi Project

4 March, 2019

Spanish servicer Haya Real Estate has just launched the Marconi Project: a set of non-performing loans (NPL) secured by real estate collateral owned by Sareb, for more than €188 million, the company informed.

This project is made up of loans that have around 1,445 registered properties under guarantee collected in 33 files. The average ticket for each of the loans offered is around €5.7 million, and 98% of the guarantees associated with these loans are already-completed homes, garages and store-rooms, while the remaining 2% is comprised of land, commercial premises and industrial buildings.

Most of these real estate collateral-backed loans are located mainly in Catalonia, Costa del Sol, Canary Islands and Madrid.

Project Marconi is divided into two phases, a non-biding phase and a biding phase, the first beginning at the end of February and ending in April with the submission of bidding offers and the closing of the transaction.

Haya Real Estate is a Spanish company leader in management of secured credit and real estate assets. Since 2016, the different sales processes launched by Haya allowed the divestment of more than €470 million.

Original Story: Haya | Kreab
Photo: Haya Real Estate
Edition:Prime Yield

Spanish Banks must improve historic lows profit margins

11 February, 2019

The improvement of their profit margins, still at historic lows, is one of the main challenges posed to the Spanish banks in 2019, according to ratings agency Standard & Poors (S&P).

Looking forward, S&P predicts more mergers among medium sized Spanish banksthis year, given the low profit margins that the sector is suffering, and that most are trading in the stock market below their book value. S&P believes that Spanish banks are well positioned, with sanitised balance sheets and favourable perspectives in terms of credit quality. However, the agency points out in its report that, after years of rating upgrades for Spanish banks, which have put them «very close to the levels of December 2011, and even before the crisis», 2019 could also see some downgrades. The agency predicts that in 2019 toxic assets on the balance sheets will continue to be reduced and that the main challenge will remain improving profit margins which remain at historic lows. In fact it is this low profitability which will drive consolidation this year which will help achieve synergies, economies of scale and cost cutting.

At the European level, S&P believe it is very unlikely that there will major cross-border mergers this year, despite the political interest in Europe that there should be. The report signals that «Banking Union is still not complete and the execution risks are greater than in domestic consolidation, where it is easier to find synergies».

Finally, S&P rules out 2019 being the year in which the State gets out of Bankia, where it controls 61.4% of the capital. Rather it predicts a «very gradual» process of withdrawal.

Original Story: The Corner
Photo: FreeImages.com /Xexo Xeperti
Edition:Prime Yield

Eurozone banks shed €30bn of NPL in 3rdquarter

8 February, 2019

The euro zone’s top banks shed some € 30 billion worth of unpaid loans (NPL) in the third quarter of 2018, in a new sign that European Central Bank pressure to clean up their balance sheets is bearing fruit.

The ECB wants banks to sell or provision for the bad debt they’ve inherited from the last recession so they can focus on extending fresh credit and are better prepared to withstand any new downturn.

ECB data showed NPL and advances held by the euro zone’s 107 top banks fell to € 627.7 billion, or 4.17% of the total, in the three months to September.

That was down from € 657.15 billion, or 4.40% of the total, and the end of the second quarter.

Large falls were seen in Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, and also in Germany. Even though, soured credit inherited from the last recession still accounted for a fifth of the loan book of Cypriot banks and for 40% of bank credit in Greece.

Original Story:Reuters | Francesco Canepa
Photo: FreeImages.com/Szymon Szymon
Edition:Prime Yield