16 | INDUSTRY Finance & Funds
NEWS IN BRIEF IFAs targeted at OPPLive
INDUSTRY By Robert Dale
THERE will be a special emphasis this year on content for Independent Financial Advisers at the OPPLive conference which takes place at Excel London from October 14-16. Advice and guidance will cover opportunities in the overseas property sector and topics include creating and distributing real estate funds. Around 150 industry leaders will travel to London from all around the world to host seminars, panels, round tables and networking events in the most comprehensive seminar and conference programme in Europe this year.
New for Mexican buyers
THE Aureos Latin American Fund is launching an investment scheme with Mexican house-builder URBI to fund access to housing for very low income buyers. The scheme expects investors like IFC and CAF, institutional investors like CDC of the UK, Bancoldex of Colombia and FMO of the Netherlands, Colombian insurance companies and pension funds, as well as Mexico’s Corporacion Mexicana de Inversiones de Capital, to be involved. Aureos Capital is a private equity fund management company specialising in investing in small to medium-sized businesses in emerging markets.
Zurich ends UK lending
ZURICH Financial Services has ended property lending in Britain and the Republic of Ireland. The insurance company also sharply increased provisions by $330 million (SFr344 million) to shield against loan losses there. “Ending this business [in Britain and Ireland] is the better option at the moment,” says the insurance and fi nancial services giant.
MUBADALA, one of Abu Dhabi’s most prominent state investment vehicles, is launching a joint venture with Pramerica Real Estate Investors to raise capital for property projects and set up funds to invest in global markets. The company, Mubadala Pramerica
Real Estate Investors, is headquartered in Abu Dhabi and will initially focus on raising funds to invest in middle-income housing in the emirate. “There’s really two parts to the strategy
– one is to invest into MENA [Middle East and North Africa] and attract capital both from this region as well around the world,” said Charles Pardoe, managing director of the new company. “The other part is to attract capital from this region and invest it outside the region in places like Asia, Latin American, North America and Europe.” Pardoe estimates that there is demand for 35,000 middle-income units over
www.opp.org.uk | AUGUST 2010 New house fund for MENA
Abu Dhabi | the new fund will concentrate on middle income housing projects
the next three years, which could have a value of about $5bn. “The question is how much of that
could we potentially capture and the answer is I don’t know ... but it’s some subset of that,” he says. Offi cials also hope that raising capital
through investment funds could help overcome fi nancing diffi culties caused by a domestic liquidity squeeze – although some experts believe this threat
could be overplayed in the region. Mubadala has a portfolio that
stretches across numerous sectors, and it already has joint ventures with Singapore’s CapitaLand and The John Buck Company, of which it also owns 24.9%. Neither Mubadara nor Pramerica
wished to reveal the size of investment in the new company or the amount of funds they are seeking to raise.
A&M launches real estate
ALVAREZ & Marsal has launched an international property advisory business in Europe to exploit the billions of bad bank loans created in the aftermath of the banking crisis. “The amount of real estate debt
coming due over the next few years in Europe and globally is staggering,” said Michael Camp, head of the company’s Global Real Estate Advisory Services practice. Scott Morey has been made managing
director and head of the new European practice. “Scott’s leadership in London and his hands-on industry experience
INDIA EXTENDS HOME LOANS
THE State Bank of India has decided to extend its fl agship home loan schemes SBI Advantage Home Loans and SBI Easy Home Loans, and leave their terms unchanged until the end of September. The home loan rate is 8% per annum fi xed for the fi rst year and 9% fi xed for the second and third years irrespective of the loan amount.
Scott Morey | Restructuirng bad loans SHARIAH LOANS SLUMP
SHARIAH-COMPLIANT loans slumped to a fi ve- year low in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the fi rst half of 2010 on credit ratings downgrades and falling property prices. Islamic syndicated loans declined 40% to $2.2 billion, compared with a 5% drop in total mortgage lending to $304 billion in the region.
will be invaluable as we expand our European real estate presence to assist companies dealing with distressed real estate as well as to provide transaction advisory, performance improvement and restructuring work for stressed
companies,” said Camp. Morey says that “hundreds of
billions” of non-performing loans in Europe will need to be restructured, with banks, funds, investors and property owners all in need of help. A & M has worked on the restructuring of Lehman Brothers and the National Asset Management Agency in Ireland. Morey has more than 22 years of
real estate consulting experience. Earlier in his career he was a senior vice president with Equity Offi ce Properties, one of the largest REITs in the world.
US SENATE COOLS OFF
THE US Senate has voted to give homebuyers who qualifi ed for a federal tax credit more “cooling off ” time to decide on their pending purchases. The programme initially required borrowers who signed contracts before April 30 2010 to complete paperwork by July 1 2010. The deadline has now been extended to September 30 2010.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68