Corte Inglés plans asset sales: including part of Madrid Xanadú

Spain’s leading department store group announced on the 28^th of December of 2018 that it had instructed PricewaterhouseCoopers to develop a strategy to sell 95 properties valued at €2 billion in order to optimize resources and reduce its debt burden.

Since then, the group has sold various properties to Corpfin including the former Marks & Spencer’s property in Valencia’s Calle Colón and 2 other properties including Gran Vía 20 (Bilbao) and Calle Princesa, 41 (Madrid) for c. €184 million.

The majority of properties in the portfolio, known as Project Green, are located in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga and Seville and their use is mostly retail (82% of built area).

According to El Confidencial, the portfolio includes their ownership of Madrid Xanadú and their store in Barcelona’s Avenida Diagonal. Other notable properties are located in San Juan de Aznalfarache (Seville), Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Ademuz (Valencia), Navarra and Independencia (Zaragoza). In total, the portfolio is composed of 14 large retail and office buildings, 65 smaller assets (both leased and empty) and 16 plots of land.   

The group has Qatari Sheikh Hamad Al Thani as its third largest shareholder with 10% of the capital, after converting into shares a €1 billion loan his company, Primefin, had granted to the Spanish department store chain in 2015. Currently, the 2 largest stakeholders are The Ramón Areces Foundation with 37.39% of the shares and the IASA property company with a 22.18% stake owned by members of the Álvarez family.