Spain's Bankia closes sale of servicing arm for €90m

Bankia, Spain's third-largest banking group, has reportedly completed the sale of its real estate servicing arm to private equity group Cerberus for around €90 mln.

According to Spanish press reports, the deal involves the real estate servicing business of Bankia Habitat while the company will retain its headquarters in Madrid and Valencia as well as the asset management business.

Bankia Habitat manages a €5.5 bn portfolio across the country consisting of real estate assets worth €2.9 bn and another €2.6 bn of development loans.

Cerberus has long been active in Spain, where it previously acquired two non-performing loan portfolios from Bank Santander and Liderbank as well as a package of Bankia Bank branches.

Bankia is the latest in a string of Spanish lenders seeking to sell their real estate activities to focus on their core business. CaixaBank and Novagalicia are both looking for buyers for their real estate subsidiaries while Santander has sold its unit to debt servicing group Lindorff.

Last week, US investor Kennedy Wilson teamed up with Värde Partners to purchase the real estate arm of lender Catalunya Bank for some €40 mln. The two investors emerged ahead of 25 bidders to acquire CatalunyaCaixa Inmobiliaria, the manager of some €8.7 bn of assets in Spain.

The deal represents the first major acquisition in Spain by California-based Kennedy Wilson and reflects the investor's ambitions to broaden its footprint in continental Europe. The company established operations in Spain last year, when it opened an office in Madrid focusing on providing asset management services as well as managing residential auctions on behalf of Spanish cash­-starved regional banks.

Minneapolis-based Värde made its first move into the Spanish market in 2011 with the purchase of a retail portfolio at a hefty discount. The package, consisting of four assets in Madrid, Mallorca and Pamplona, was acquired from APN European Retail Property Group, which is managed by Australia's APN Funds Management Limited, and its lender on the asset, Royal Bank of Scotland.