Lenders to Impreme spa, a property developer owned by Rome’s Mezzaroma family, gave their formal go-head in a meeting in front of the Rome Court to a debt restructuring agreement which had been signed last July between the company, banks and US distressed specialist Yarde.
Actually las Summer Varde bought about 200 million euros of face value of distressed loans from Aareal Bank, Banco Bpm and UniCredit (the latter being exposed for 142.3 million euros) versus Mezzaroma group for a price in a range between 40 and 75%, after having bought 221 million euros of loans from Mps (a huge exposition due to the fact that the Mezzaroma family used to own the Siena soccer team). So Varde actually bought all Impreme’s banking debt.
The fund, which is led in Italy by Mr. Luca Malighetti, also committed to subscribe a capital increase in Impreme and to invest 75 million euros in new finance in order to support the development of residential real estate projects after having bought all existing mortages back. All that will bring Varde to invest a total of 110 million euros and be owner of a 40% stake in the group.
The three sisters Barbara, Valentina and Alessandra, daugthers of founder Pietro Mezzaroma, will retain a 60% stake in the company and Barbara will remain ceo of the group, while Massimo Mezzaroma will exit the capital.
As MF Milano Finanza wrote last July, Varde beated Oaktree in the auction for Mps’s loans and York Capital too, the latter having entered the auction at the last minute also leaving to make a due diligence of the loans portfolio. Varde was supported in the deal by financial advisor Lazard e Orrick law firm.
Varde has been quite active in Italy in the last few months. Varde has actually closed a similar deal on distressed hotel group Boscolo (see here a previous post by BeBeez) and bought a 33% stake in credit servicer Guber (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
