Last year, Spanish banks sold portfolios of toxic assets for a total value of €6.7 billion, including a portfolio of €1.5 billion from Sareb, according to a compilation by Axis Corporate (Accenture).
If we add the transactions that took place in the secondary market between the private equity firms themselves, the amount rises to €17.86 billion, a volume similar to that of 2023, but half the historical record of 2018. At the same time, Ana Botín suddenly transferred all of Popular’s real estate risk (€30 billion) to Blackstone.
Santander was the most active bank last year, with seven transactions of toxic asset portfolios for a total of €1.8 billion. CaixaBank is next in the ranking, having transferred batches of non-performing loans and real estate for a total of €973 million.
Sabadell follows with €938 million.
Sareb, the vehicle in which the toxic assets of the nine savings banks bailed out during the financial crisis are parked, transferred 1.5 billion in unpaid loans to Axactor in one fell swoop.
According to Accenture, this year will see an acceleration in the sale of real estate risk assets by Sareb, as its legal dissolution is imminent. This is scheduled for 2027, although the government has the power to extend the deadline.
The size of portfolios changing hands has fallen sharply in recent years. The size of 78% of portfolios is less than €500 million.
Going forward, Accenture predicts that most buyout activity will focus on unsecured and refinanced loans.
€73.5 billion of NPL to be unwound
The clean-up of Spanish banks’ real estate assets is well underway after almost twenty years. But there are still €73.5 billion worth of toxic assets to be unwound.
Santander is the bank with the largest real estate holdings on its balance sheet: €36 billion. It is followed by BBVA with €15.327 billion. And CaixaBank with 10.352 billion.
Unicaja made a clean sweep last year and its stock of toxic assets fell by 14%. Its risk volume (€1.348 billion) is similar to that of Bankinter, which did not lend to property developers in the years before the property bubble.
The private equity firms Cerberus, Blackstone, Lone Star and Axactor are the ones that have fattened their portfolios with toxic assets from Spanish banks over the last decade.
Between the four of them, they have acquired €97.35 billion of real estate risk owned by the banks or bought back from other private equity firms. This is half of the €207.52 billion that have changed hands, according to Axis Corporate data.
The real estate legacy still to be liquidated is now reduced and so well provisioned that portfolio sales no longer cause losses in the income statement.
Original Story: Expansión | Author: R.Lander
Edition and translation: Prime Yield