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Last week, Spain’s so-called ‘bad bank’, which was set up in December 2012 to take over toxic property and land assets from the country’s troubled financial institutions in order to ‘cleanse’ their books, started promoting its first batch of properties.

2705707 935679 foto 1 300x156 - Spain’s 'bad bank' begins businessThe new state-run bank, ‘Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria’, known by its acronym SAREB, began its operation by putting 13,000 properties, once belonging to rescued lender Bankia, on the market.

In total, by the end of last year, SAREB had taken on 37 billion euros worth of assets from four nationalised banks. In exchange, the banks received EU rescue funds as well as bonds.

These assets, purchased at knock-down prices are to be sold on to investors over a 15-year period, offering a minimum return of 14 per cent.
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The ‘bad bank’ could help save a large number of companies that suffer from the effects of the stagnation on the real estate market in Spain.

For this reason, nobody in the sector wants to let go of this opportunity and everyone is taking positions to be involved in the new entity in one way or the other. Certainly, the state-backed bank rescue fund, the FROB, does not pay much, but little is better than nothing, given the state of the market.

banco de espana 300x225 - Real Estate sector and the bad bankThe last ones to have claimed their participation in the new entity are the developers, which are probably among the most affected by the crisis. Their argument is that they are the ones who really know the market and, for that reason, are the best to evaluate the assets that will be transferred to the bad bank.

“The FROB, or whoever will have the mandate over these assets, must increase the management capacity and for that reason, it must take help from the sector,” said José Manuel Galindo, head of the Association for Developers and Constructors in Spain (APCE).

The real estate assesors also want to participate. The main companies in this sector, such as Tinsa, Sociadad de Tasación and Valmesa, aspire to get hired to assess the assets of the nationalized entities –in principle, only these entities- that will be transferred into the new instrument.
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The Bank of Spain had chosen two consultants so that they value the Spanish banks’ assets.

The purpose of this evaluation is to “increase transparency and definitively dispel doubts about the valuation of bank assets in Spain”, Economy Ministry sources said.

De Guindos 300x198 - Spanish Banking System under examThe independent consultants selected are the German Roland Berger, and Oliver Wyman of the United States. Oliver Wyman has a dark point on his curriculum as he classified Anglo Irish Bank as the best in the world in 2006, just two years before this bank was nationalized.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos refused on Monday any further serious regression in home loan defaults.

The performing loan ratio for mortgages currently stands at 2.8 percent, compared with 21 percent for credit to the real estate sector. The banking system’s loan portfolio is currently around 1.76 trillion euros, of which 656 billion is in the form of mortgages to individual homeowners and around 310 billion to property developers. In a decree approved earlier this month, the government increased provisions for loans to developers to up 45 percent of the value of the credit.
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