US group Apollo Global Management is understood to be leading the race to buy a portfolio of distressed loans with a nominal value of €800 mln and repossessed assets worth €50 mln.
Five bidders - Apollo Global Management, Fortress Investment Group, Lone Star Funds, Pimco and Centerbridge Partners – are vying for the Jupiter portfolio which is being sold by Alpha Bank in Greece’s second major property-backed loan sale this year.
Binding offers were due on Monday October 15, and Alpha Bank is expected to pick a winner in the next few days.
‘I expect the bank to take its time, comparing offers on an equal footing before announcing a winner. Certainty of execution is very important as Alpha needs to close the transaction by year end,’ said a source who wished to remain anonymous.
Bids are said to have come in at around 25% of nominal value.
The package includes a total of 1,700 properties with over a third (36%) of hotel properties, a quarter of residential assets, and 23% of commercial properties.
Greek banks are saddled with some €100 bn of NPLs and are under growing regulatory pressure to tackle their bad debt problem. Earlier this year Bain Capital emerged as the buyer of the Amoeba non-performing loan portfolio with an on-balance sheet gross asset value of €1.45 bn in Greece's first major property-backed sale by a local bank.
This article first appeared in EuroProperty, the weekly publication of PropertyEU.
