Greek lender Alpha Bank has picked Apollo Global Management as preferred bidder for a portfolio of distressed loans including secured debt with a nominal value of €800 mln and repossessed assets worth €50 mln, PropertyEU can reveal.
The US group is believed to have offered around €300 mln for the Jupiter portfolio which is being sold in Greece’s second major property-backed loan sale this year.
Apollo emerged ahead of four other bidders - Fortress Investment Group, Lone Star Funds, Pimco and Centerbridge Partners – in the race to acquire the loans which have a total face value of around €1.2 bn and are securitised against some 1,700 assets with over a third (36%) of hotel properties, a quarter of residential assets, and 23% of commercial properties.
According to market sources, Apollo and Alpha Bank have yet to come to terms on a number of issues in the sale and purchase agreement and Lone Star and Fortress are the runner-ups in case negotiations with Apollo fall through. Alpha Bank has to close the deal before year-end.
It would be the second major non-performing loan acquisition by Apollo in the region this year. Earlier in 2018, PropertyEU revealed that the New York-based public equity group inked the purchase of the €2.8 bn Project Helix non-performing loan portfolio from Bank of Cyprus, the island’s largest lender.
Apollo paid €1.4 bn for the package, or 48 cents on the dollar. The package included a total of 14,000 loans secured by 9,065 properties. The deal, which was capital accretive to Bank of Cyprus, was partly financed with debt including the provision of a €450 mln senior tranche from the vendor.
