B2 Kapital, the Italian credi servicer part of the listed Norwegian group B2Holding, active since February 2017 in Italy and led by Francesco Fedele, announced two deals yesterday.
On the one hand B2 Kapital has isigned an agreement with Banca Sella for the sale of a portfolio of bad loans secured and for a forward flow project for a period of 24 months (see the press release here). While on the other hand B2 Kapital bought from UniCredit a.d. Banja Luka and UniCredit Bank d.d. Mostar a mixed portfolio of non-performing loans guaranteed and unsecured by SMEs and companies under Bosnian law worth 24.5 million euros (see the press release here). Following the acquisitions concluded to date, the Npl portfolio owned by B2 Kapital exceeds one billion euros in nominal value.
As for the Banca Sella deal, following the transaction just announced Banca Sella in the first half of 2019 exceeded 50 million gross of Npl sold, in line with the Npl dynamic management plan, and reached a proforma gross NPL ratio as of 30 June 2019 equal to around 8%. B2 Kapital had already purchased a 125.5 million mixed Npl portfolio from Banca Sella in May 2017 (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
As for Unicredit, the impact of yesterday’s deal will be included in the financial statements for the third quarter of 2019 and constitutes part of UniCredit’s current strategy for reducing impaired exposures. Last May the ceo Jean Pierre Mustier in the call with analysts commenting on the first quarterly report of 2019 had declared that he intended to accelerate the disposal of non-performing loans, especially non-core ones. The ceo had made it clear by now that the non-core bad loans should fall significantly beyond the 2019 target of 14.9 billions to around 10 billion (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Not by chance at the beginning of June Unicredit announced the start of the second phase of the Sandokan program with the signing of the agreement to entrust the management and special servicing activities relating to the loan portfolio unlikely to pay real estate named Sandokan 2 to Pimco, Gwm and Arec (Aurora Recovery Capital) for a maximum amount of 2 billion euros, to be sold in several successive tranches (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The bank then put three Npl portfolios on the market for a total value of another 2.4 billion. This is the Roma portfolio (1.4 billion unsecured loans), of the Matera portfolio (from 750 million guaranteed loans); and the Capri portfolio (300 million Npl secured) (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Unicredit had already sold in June 2018 to B2 Kapital a gross 245.7 million euros portfolio of impaired loans issued by the Croatian subsidiary Zagrebacka banka to businesses and individuals (see here a previous post by BeBeez). UniCredit Bulbank (Bulgaria) had instead always sold to B2 Kapital an 84 million bad loan portfolio in November 2017 (see here a previous post by BeBeez) and another 93 million portfolio in January 2017 (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Finally, in December 2016, B2 Kapital bought a 110 million bad loan portfolio from Unicredit Slovenia (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
As for the other operations carried out in Italy by B2 Kapital, last April it acquired a non-performing portfolio of around 46 million euros from CentroMarca Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Treviso e Venezia (see here a previous post by BeBeez) and in 2017 it had bought other two secured and unsecured mixed non-performing loan portfolios for a total gross value of 175 million euros, originating from leading banking groups (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
