Novo Banco sold 400M€ real estate portfolio to Cerberus

  • ECO News
  • 24 July 2019

Novo Banco just closed the deal for selling its 400M€ real estate portfolio to the investment fund Cerberus together with Finsolutia.

Novo Banco (NB) just closed the deal for selling its 400M€ real estate portfolio to the investment fund Cerberus together with Finsolutia. ECO confirmed with an inside source that Cerberus was competing with Bain, in a partnership with Whitestar, for the dubbed “Sertorius Project”.

This real estate portfolio is composed of 200 assets, two-thirds of non-identified lands and some industrial, residential and commercial properties, Jornal de Negócios has revealed in April. Most of them are located either in Lisbon or Setubal areas.

By the end of last year, Cerberus acquired Santander Totta’s 600M€ real estate assets as it has also bought BES Vénétie to Novo Banco for 50M€.

The bank led by António Ramalho keeps following a strict strategy of non-rentable assets’ reduction by alienating non-performing loans and real estate portfolios as a result of the European regulators’ requirements. Over the next months, Novo Banco expects to close a deal on “Nata 2 Project”, which is a 3Bn€ NPL portfolio and the biggest ever sold in Portugal, as ECO confirmed in exclusive.

Regarding Nata 2, Bain, KKR Davidson Kempner moved on to the second phase of the tender, which is the binding offer. Bloomberg wrote that Bain would be the best-placed contender, right in front of Davidson Kempner.

Both operations need to be approved by the Resolution Fund as they must respond for the losses related to portfolio alienation. This year, the fund led by Máximo dos Santos was called to inject more 1,145M€ under the clause of contingent capital mechanism in the 2017 contract with the American Lone Star for 75% of the bank.