Aareal Bank lends €160m to Spanish mall developer

German lender Aareal has arranged a financing facility of €160 mln for La Sociedad General Inmobiliaria (LSGI), a Spanish shopping centre developer-investor, in what is believed to be its first transaction in Spain in years.

The loan has been granted for the Plaza Norte 2 shopping centre in Madrid, with Aareal Bank providing €106.7 mln and an unnamed local bank €53.3 mln of the facility. Aareal Bank is acting as loan arranger and agent.

The prime regional shopping centre was inaugurated in 2004 and comprises 45,000 m2 of gross leasable area distributed over more than 200 retail units. Plaza Norte 2 is part of the Megapark Retail Park located in the north of the city, one of the largest retail destinations in the Madrid metropolitan area.

'We are delighted to strengthen our existing lending relationship with LSGI through this deal. Due to the close cooperation among all partners, this significant and complex transaction was closed in a very short period of time,' commented Rüdiger Staab, general manager of Aareal Bank's Madrid representative office.

Aareal had been looking to lend again in Spain for some time. Speaking at PropertyEU's Investment Briefing in March, Paul Stone, general manager North West Europe at Aareal, said that the lender planned to follow the growing number of clients who were re-entering the Spanish property market.

'We are going to be selective but [...] our key customers are going to Spain and so we will follow their course there,' Stone said at the time.