Oaktree, Chenavari win €1.3bn Bankia portfolios

Oaktree Capital Management and hedge fund Chenavari are buying three loan portfolios worth a total of €1.3bn from Spain’s Bankia.

The two investors have split Bankia’s €918m Portfolio Mast, which comprises of 4,300 unpaid residential mortgages with an average value of €214,000, made to individuals in Catalonia, Madrid and Valencia.

US investment firm Oaktree is also buying the €178m Portfolio Board, which contains loans to small and medium-sized businesses and real estate developers, secured on commercial property assets.

London-based credit specialist Chenavari is buying the €216m Portfolio Find comprised of unsecured loans.

Known as Project Wind, the three sales signal the beginning of the end for Bankia’s real estate disposal programme. The bank has just one large portfolio left on the market, a €4.8bn package of real estate assets for sale called Project Big Bang.

That sale involves a portfolio of 38,500 residential assets, 5,000 commercial and 2,600 plots of land spread across Spain.

Oaktree, Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, Cerberus Capital Management and Deutsche Bank are among the bidders for Project Big Bang. The sale will be the largest disposal of real estate assets in Spain since the financial crisis struck.

Project Wind’s successful conclusion follows Bankia’s sale of a portfolio of hotel debt worth €383m, to Bank of America at the beginning of June. Known as Project Castle, the sale involved 91 loans made on 45 assets across Spain.

Last December, Starwood Capital and Bain affiliate, Sankaty Advisors, bought Bankia’s €800m Project Amazon non-performing loans portfolio. The assets included €370m of hotel loans, secured on around 30 assets, mainly in the 3-to-5 star range in Catalonia, Valencia and the Canary Islands.

Bankia was formed in 2010 in the wake of Spain’s property bust by merging seven regional savings banks. It was partially nationalised in 2012 and made the largest loss, €19bn, in Spanish corporate history that year.

Cerberus’ bid for Project Big Bang follows its reluctance to commit to Banco Popular’s €500m Project Elcano portfolio until after Spain’s general election in November.