Spain’s bad bank chose investment firms Apollo Global Management, Cerberus Capital Management and TPG Capital Management to market real estate-linked assets valued at €41 billion ($51 billion).
Units of the firms will take on three portfolios with a combined 126,000 assets including property and loans, said an e-mailed statement from SAREB Thursday. The management and sale agreements will be in force for five to seven years starting Jan. 1. (Spain set up SAREB in 2012 to take on the distressed real estate-linked assets of the country’s most-troubled banks.)
Investment firms have been building their presence in Spain as they seek opportunities in the rubble of the country’s property market after a real estate crash pushed Spain into taking a €41 billion bailout to prop up its banking system in 2012. Banco Santander, Spain’s biggest bank, sold its real estate service unit Altamira to Apollo in January, and Blackstone Group agreed to buy €6.4 billion of mortgages from the CatalunyaCaixa group for €3.6 billion in July.
Haya Real Estate, owned by Cerberus, will market over the next five years about 52,000 real estate-linked loans valued around €18 billion. Apollo’s Altamira will manage 44,000 properties or developer loans valued at €14 billion. Servihabitat, owned by TPG, will market for seven years 30,300 properties and loans valued at €9.2 billion when passed to the bad bank, SAREB said.
The €41 billion amount is what the assets were valued at when transferred to the bad bank, SAREB said.
