By Jeannette Neumann
MADRID--Spain's "bad bank" said Thursday it had chosen major
investment firms Apollo Global Management LLC, TPG Capital
Management and Cerberus Capital Management LP to market and sell
about EUR41 billion ($50.48 billion) worth of property assets on
its behalf.
The coveted job will give the three U.S. firms commissions and
insight into Spain's recovering real-estate market. The bad bank,
known by its Spanish acronym Sareb, chose Spanish bank Banco de
Sabadell SA last month to manage assets worth about EUR7
billion.
Apollo, which bought Banco Santander SA's real-estate service in
January, will manage 44,089 real-estate assets worth about EUR14
billion over seven years, the bad bank said. Apollo's portfolio
includes real-estate assets that were transferred to Sareb by banks
including bailed out-lender Catalunya Banc SA.
Sareb selected Haya Real Estate SA, owned by Cerberus, to market
and sell 52,168 property loans worth about EUR18 billion over the
next five years. Those loans were originated by Bankia SA, Spain's
largest bailed-out lender.
TPG, which owns 51% of a servicer previously held by Spanish
lender Caixabank SA, has been selected to manage 30,342 properties
and real-estate loans worth EUR9.2 billion over seven years. TPG's
portfolio includes real-estate assets that had been on the books of
banks including bailed-out lender NCG Banco SA.
The three investors beat out Centerbridge Partners LP, which had
made it to the final round of bidding, according to people involved
in the process.
Blackstone Group LP had expressed interest in the job at an
earlier stage. The private-equity giant has its hands full in Spain
after it bought around 40,000 mortgage loans in July from Catalunya
Banc, which cost Spanish taxpayers EUR12 billion in a 2011
bailout.
Sareb was created in November 2012 as a depository for the
most-troubled Spanish banks to unload EUR51 billion in risky
real-estate loans, residential foreclosures, unfinished commercial
properties and undeveloped pieces of land.
Nine Spanish lenders transferred nearly 200,000 real-estate
related assets to the bad bank. Since then, these banks have also
been marketing and selling properties and loans on behalf of the
bad bank.
The three investment funds and Sabadell will take over the
management of those properties from those banks on Jan. 1--a change
aimed at diminishing perceived conflicts of interest. The banks
that have been managing Sareb's assets are also trying to unload
their own real-estate assets that weren't transferred to the bad
bank.
The value of the properties and loans to be managed by the three
funds and Sabadell is based on the value of those assets when they
were transferred to Sareb, meaning their value could have
changed.
Write to Jeannette Neumann at jeannette.neumann@wsj.com
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