Apollo Global Management announced a strategic partnership with Realty Partners srl to invest in real estate in Italy (see here the press release).
Realty Partners is owned by Umberto Vitiello and Luca de Ambrosis Ortigara and is managed by Mr. Vitiello and Mr. de Ambrosis, together with Vincenzo Buonocore and Fausto Maria Monachesi.
Founded in 2003 by Mr. Vitiello and de Ambrosis together with other private partners (with together with Giulio Malfatto among them) with real estate company Aedes spa and insurance group Fondiaria Sai as minority shareholders, Realty Partners used to be an advisory and asset management boutique focused on real estate sector and supporting third investors with an operative and strategic local platform.
Apollo, thanks to its partnership with Realty Partners, aims at investing in assets, which have potential for value enhancement (through conversions, restructuring, market repositioning). Assets can originate from ordinary and extraordinary disposals, acquisitions of real estate companies or investments in secured NPLs.
“Italy is a key market in terms of real estate growth forecast in forthcoming years. We wanted to reinforce our presence through a partnership with highly skilled professionals that share our value oriented approach to investing, and this is the reason why we took the decision to work with Realty Partners”, Roger Orf, Partner, European Principal Finance and Head of Real Estate for Europeat Apollo said
“We are very pleased to deepen our investments activities in the Italian real estate market and we hope to deploy a meaningful amount of capital in the next few years”, Steve McElwain, Partner, European Principal Finance at Apollo added.
Andrea Moneta, Senior Advisor Italy and Operating Partner for Financial Services at Apollo remainded that “The agreement with Realty Partners represents the third of a series of recent initiatives announced by Apollo (along with recently announced partnerships with DeA Capital for investments in NPLs and Apeiron Management for investments in Illiquid Credit) to capitalize on the opportunity for Apollo to provide tailored solutions addressing the specific needs of the Italian market.”
Actually in the last few days Apollo announced it destined about 300 million euros to a a new investment platform called Apollo Delos aiming at investing in Italian corporate distressed credit which will be advised by a just born advisory company, Apeiron Management spa, working with an exclusive mandate for Apollo (see ahere a previous post by BeBeez).
Last January Apollo had instead announced an investment in the new Special Opportunities I Fund, managed by Dea Capital Real Estate sgr, which will invest in non performing loans, mostly secured, aiming portfolios of about 50-100 million euros gross value each. The fund just announced its first closing at 200 million euros thanks to subscriptions from Apollo and Dea Capital itself, while the fund is targeting 250 million euros for its final fundraising. So the new fund will manage Apollo European Principal Finance Fund III‘s investments in NPLs in Italy (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
In Italy Apollo owns insurance companies Carige Assicurazioni and Carige Vita Nuova, then renamed Amissima, since October 2014 (see here a previous post byBeBeez).
On Dec 31st 2017 Apollo had 249 billion dollars of assets under management in private equity, credit and real estate sectors, s figure 30% upper than 2016. Apollo’s chairman and ceo Leon Black declared recently that “compared with 2016, fee-related earnings increased by almost 20%, while our declared cash distribution rose by 45% and our economic net income advanced by more than 50%” (see here the press release).
Leon Black will cash in 191 million dollars in 2017 dividends this year (on a total of 970.1 million dollars of distributable net earnings), after 131.9 millions obtained in 2016 and 128.2 millions in 2015, while Black is said to have piled up to 5.9 billion euros as personal wealth (see here Bloomberg and last February investors’ presentation).
(post modified on March 13th at 12.50 am emending some details about Realty Partners’ shareholders structure)
