Radical change in Sareb’s partners. Spain’s Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria (SAREB) has chosen KKR (through its Spanish company Hipoges) and the Blackstone fund (through its asset managers Aliseda/Anticipa) as the new servicers that will manage its €25.3 billion mega-portfolio of real estate assets and loans.
In this way, the bad bank leaves out its traditional partners after calling a tender with which it sought to save costs. Haya (Cerberus fund), Altamira (doValue) and Solvia (Intrum) have lost this mega-contract. In addition, Servihabitat (Lone Star) had already dropped out of the first part of the tender by submitting the most expensive bid.
In the coming weeks, Sareb will finalise the portfolios to be managed by each of the two winners. As of 1 July, they will take over from the outgoing managers. The portfolios comprise 13,300 million in unpaid developer loans and 12,000 million in residential real estate, land and tertiary assets, all of which are toxic assets from the banks during the brick crisis.
On the decision to choose the new servicers, the proprietary directors who represent the financial institutions on the board of directors have not been involved in the voting, according to sources close to the process, and have left the approval in the hands of the chairman Javier García del Río, the independent directors and those of the FROB (dependent on the Ministry of Economy).
The main objective in calling the tender is to reduce the annual bill it pays to the servicers for the management of its portfolio, which has an annual cost of around 160 million. The entity calculates that with the proposals from Hipoges and Aliseda/Anticipa it saves around 20% compared to the contracts signed in 2014 and 10% compared to the one signed with Haya in 2019.
The financial institution has decided to reduce the number of fund managers to two in order to, in exchange for reducing the margins paid, give a greater volume of business to the winners.
The contenders in this tender had to first submit an economic offer, after which Sareb rejected Servihabitat, and a technical offer. The institution chaired by Del Río considers that Hipoges has enormous professional capacity, with the greatest diversification of clients in the country. Of Anticipa/Aliseda (Blackstone companies that have presented themselves jointly), it values their robust capacity to manage large portfolios. “Both have first-class technological platforms to provide an optimal service to Sareb”, according to Sareb.
It is now a complicated process for the losers of the tender, since, given the size of the portfolio under management, Sareb is one of the largest clients in terms of volume for all of them. The project has been supervised by an independent auditor, Mazars, which has validated the integrity and good execution of the process, according to Sareb.
A closing phase is now underway with the two selected bidders. In the event of any setback in the final negotiation, Sareb’s board could decide to move forward with the next candidates in the order of scoring, as all bids have been considered valid.
The bad bank also has other partners for different tasks. In the case of urban development, it has Servihabitat, through its subsidiary Serviland, as manager. For the completion of stalled works, it partnered with Domo, and in the case of residential development, it launched the developer Árqura, managed by the real estate company Aelca (of the Värde Partners fund).
“We are very pleased to have been chosen by Sareb as one of the companies that will manage its portfolio of more than 25 billion euros of real estate assets and loans. It is a great challenge for Aliseda and Anticipa”, say these Blackstone companies, whose CEO is Eduard Mendiluce.
Original Story: Cinco Dias |Alfonso Ruiz
Photo: Sareb website
Translation & Edition: Prime Yield