TPG Capital has emerged ahead of bidders Bridgepoint, Fortress and Starwood to acquire a 51% interest in Caixa bank's real estate services arm for some €185 mln.
TPG Capital has emerged ahead of bidders Bridgepoint, Fortress and Starwood to acquire a 51% interest in Caixa bank's real estate services arm for some €185 mln.
According to Spanish press reports, the deal - which has yet to close - values the entire business of Servihabitat Gestión Inmobiliaria at around €370 mln.
As part of the agreement, US-based private equity investment group TPG will take over the management of the entire portfolio of Servihabitat as well as the Building Center unit but will not buy Servihabitat's 12,000 residential property holdings.
Parent company Caixa d'Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona hired Morgan Stanley in the spring to sell a stake in the real estate services company.
In July, Servihabitat sold Serrano 60 building in the Salamanca district of Madrid to private equity group Meyer Bergman. Serrano 60 consists of a total built area of 8,105 m2 spread over six floors and four levels of underground parking.
La Caixa 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.
Bankia, Spain's third-largest banking group, reportedly completed the sale of its real estate servicing arm to private equity group Cerberus for around €90 mln.
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.
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.
