Bankinter is making progress in cleaning up its balance sheet by selling off impaired assets. Its finance company, Bankinter Consumer Finance, has sold a portfolio of consumer loans and cards, mostly non-performing (NPL), to Invest Capital Malta, part of the Polish debt collection group KRUK. The portfolio, known as the Jábega portfolio, has a gross value of €59 million, according to market sources.

The transaction follows at least two sales by the same bank this year. Bankinter placed the Maui and Kona projects, with a combined gross exposure of almost €340 million. The transactions, advised by GBS Finance, were placed with the UK fund LCM Partners (Link Financial) and comprise €280 million gross in unsecured loans (Maui) and more than €60 million in loans on industrial premises and warehouses (Kona). 

In the first case, a portfolio of NPL to individuals and SMEs with a nominal value of €315 million was allocated (a further €330 million was allocated to Link Capital Management), while BBVA allocated a portfolio of €427 million in financing, also unsecured, to KRUK, and Cerberus allocated a sub-portfolio of €250 million in loans to SMEs, which will be managed by GCBE (formerly Gescobro). The Polish company plans to invest around EUR 175 million this year in the purchase of debt portfolios in Spain, a market that has thus become one of its main investment destinations.

Throughout the year, the banking sector has focused on shedding ballast, believing that defaults would rise due to the higher cost of living with inflation and the vertical rise in interest rates. The consultancy firm Atlas Value Management estimates that transactions with a gross volume of €25,000 million will be concluded this year, of which 67.30% will be unsecured loans, similar to the transaction just concluded by Bankinter.

The portfolios of most banks (Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankinter, Sabadell, Abanca, Unicaja and Cajamar), their financial subsidiaries and those of El Corte Inglés and Carrefour, as well as other players such as Sareb, Cofidis, Blackstone, Axactor and the investment banking division of Deutsche Bank, have been placed on the market. 

KRUK has been one of the most active players this year in the acquisition of unsecured NPL. Before the summer, the Polish collection company took over two of the largest transactions launched by banks in this type of debt: a sub-tranche of CaixaBank’s Twister project and another of BBVA’s Nairobi project.

Original Story: Eva Contreras | El Economista
Image: Website Bankinter
Translation & Edition: Prime Yield