Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

Real Estate

George Soros And John Paulson May Be Buying Into New Spanish REIT For $128 Million Each

(L-R) George Soros and John Paulson / Getty

 –

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.

International casino and resort king Sheldon Adelson may have abandoned plans to invest billions in Spain, at least for the moment, but other top US investors have quietly begun to take the view it may be the place to be to put some serious long term money again.

In October of last year, Bill Gates bought a 6% stake in the ailing Spanish engineering and construction company giant, Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas  (FCC) for short, by way of purchase of new treasury shares. In late December George Soros  also bought a 3% position in FCC, this time in the marketplace.

Now it is reported that George Soros, who is Chairman of Soros Fund Management, is looking at another strategic investment in Spain, this time in real estate. The Spanish real estate sector suffered a complete collapse in that after massive over-building based on cheap credit, in the years leading up to the financial crisis that burst upon us in 2008.

This time Soros and private equity king John Paulson, who heads up Paulson & co, are each investing US$128 million (Euros 92 million) in a new Spanish real estate investment vehicle named Hispania, according to a report in London’s Financial Times.

concha_osacar

The local sponsor of Hispania is the Spanish private equity firm Azora, which specializes in real estate, who announced last week they hope to list the new vehicle on the Spanish stock exchange, and raise about US$690 million (euros 500 million) from well-heeled private investors. Azora is led by Ms. Concha Osácar who co-founded the firm in 2003 and formerly was head of real estate at the Santander Bank.

Essentially the Hispania project falls into the definition of a REIT, or a SOCIMI as real estate investment trusts are known in Spain (and by the way it stands for: sociedades cotizadas de inversión en el mercado inmobiliario, just in case you were asking).

Last summer, in August, 2013 Azora picked up a package of 3, 200 apartments in Spain, mainly in and around the capital city of Madrid, from the Madrid regional government, for about US$277, million (Euros 201 million). This was entirely a private equity transaction however, as was a smaller purchase just before it occurred, of 1, 860 properties sold by the Madrid city government to the Blackstone Group for about US$173 million (Euros 126 million).

Now if Hispania gets off the ground, Soros, Paulson and indeed others may be joining in at the ground floor of a fairly substantial publicly listed entity to pick up some real estate bargains in Spain now, just as the economy there may be starting to recover.

Neither George Soros nor John Paulson has cared to comment officially on these plans, which it is possible may have been quietly leaked by Azora in order to gain some buzz ahead of their capital raise.

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.