…and this is good news!
I returned to Spain to be greeted with this exciting bit of news – not sure why they thought I’d be particularly interested.
Anyway, the US deal I mentioned recently seems to have fallen through, and instead Cajamar Group have sold off Cimenta2 assets to Haya Real Estate, a “Spanish service group specialised in the management of building investment and real estate asset management”. Although I suspect that los politicos didn’t want a direct US deal, and that digging around in the investors behind Haya would reveal more than a few anglosajón names.
It’s a complicated deal.
Cimenta2 is the real estate arm of Cajamar which has about 7.3 billion euros of assets, mainly bad debt and empty half built apartments. The ruins of the last boom, basically.
Haya have paid Cajamar 225 million euros to take over the management of Cimenta2 for 10 years. The assets of Cimenta2 technically remain on the Cajamar books, meaning the bank doesn’t take a loss on the deal.
Haya then goes after the bad debt, consolidating and selling off anything it can, and, I assume, pockets the profits, booking the sales via Cajamar, and no doubt quietly consolidating and eliminating the debts.
At the end of the 10 years, it’s someone else’s problem.
Good stuff. Cajamar is not only Spain’s largest savings bank, it’s our local rural savings bank, being based out of Almería.