Blaxland’s REIT sells 14 bank branches.

Spanish REIT, URO Property Holdings, SOCIMI, has sold 14 high street units to Lerma Investments, S.L. for €29.5M.

The portfolio is fully leased to Banco Santander for an obligatory period of, approximately, 21 years on average. Following this sale the SOCIMI has a liquidity of approximately €44M and continues to own a bank branch portfolio valued at c. €1.8 billion.

Uro Property Holdings SOCIMI SA is a Madrid-based REIT which focuses on the acquisition, development and investment management of income producing retail properties. The SOCIMI manages a portfolio of approximately 750 properties leased to banks located in the regions of Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia.

The board of directors is chaired by Carlos Martínez de Campos, who was chairman of Barclays Bank, SAU from 1984 after having been appointed Managing Director of Barclays PLC in Spain since 1969. He also served as President of Barclays in France and as Director of Merck Finck & Co private bank in Munich. Carlos has served on the Board of Directors of a number of companies including Rio Tinto Minera, Descontiber, Lanetro Zed, Everis, Prosegur, USP Hospitales and the Advisory Board of Apax Partners in Spain, amongst others.

The president of the Spanish REIT is Simon Blaxland who was over 25 years of experience in real estate, many of them working for investment companies in Spain focused mainly on the office and retail sectors. He began his professional career in 1987 at Knight Frank in London and later in Madrid. He then worked for Prima Inmobiliaria, SA in Madrid and the French bank Credit Commercial de France (now HSBC) in Paris. Between 1996 and 2001 Simon worked for Goldman Sachs in Paris and London, where he formed part of the Whitehall property investment fund team before joining the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs. After a brief spell as Country Manager for GE Real Estate Manager for Spain and Portugal, Simon founded Exmoor Group in 2004 in Spain, where he was managing partner until September 2012. He was also served as European Investment Director for AEW Europe.