Cerberus Capital Management bought a 57% in Officine CST, a leading Rome-based servicer wirth a special focus on Public Administration credit management (see here the press release).
Officine CST’s ceo Gianpiero Oddone will remain in charge and keep a 28% stake in the company, while Ceberus senior advisor Roberto Nicastror will be non executive chairman (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Till last October 2017 a 10% stake in Officine CST had been in the portfolio of Industria e Innovazione, a Milan-listed investment company which reached a debt restructuring agreement with its senior lenders last year and was rescued this year by PLC Group spa (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The debt restructuring agreement included the sale of that 10% stake to Officine CST itself for 900k euros, pr the sum of a 670k euros price plus dividends matured by Industria e Innovazione but still not distributed for 230k euro.
Founded in 2004, Officine CST provides integrated credit management services to large enterprises such as banks, institutional investors, utilities, and multinational companies, as well as small and medium sized enterprises. The company manages over €16 billion in claims and employs 150 people in Italy.
In 2009, it expanded its services to include Public Administration, both local and central, and the corporate credits market, also operating with the PCC (Credit Certification Platform of the MEF), and supplying the Master Legal services (full, highly automated outsourcing of legal credit management). In 2012, Officine CST expanded into unsecured, non-performing loans owed to utilities by the private sector (companies and individuals), and secured non-performing loans, owed to banks by their customers. Since 2017, Officine has been managing Crediticertificati.it, a digital marketplace for the divestment and monetisation of PA credits, including in partnership with various category associations.
Cerberus has an extensive track record of investing in credit, private equity, and real estate in Europe. Since 2010, Cerberus has invested over 40 billion euros in transactions with leading European financial institutions. The firm is the largest investor in European non-performing loans and real estate owned assets since 2013. In Italy, Cerberus has acquired or been awarded secured and unsecured Npl and Reo portfolios with a gross book value of over 5.5 billion euros, and approximately 400,000 loans with a purchase price in excess of 1.6 billion euros.
