Novo Banco sells Lisbon property assets

Novo Banco has begun selling its property assets in Lisbon including it’s headquarters in Avenida da Liberdade.

The bank will sell 11 buildings in the Greater Lisbon area and will move to Amoreiras where it will build a new headquarters in which all of its services and departments will be concentrated.

According to local newspapers Público and Expresso, the portfolio of buildings are already for sale, among them is the historic headquarters of the Espírito Santo Group in Avenida da Liberdade which was the company’s base for 60 years.

In Amoreiras the bank will construct a purpose-built headquarters on a 130,000 square metres plot of land which it owns and was purchased from the real estate developer Temple, owned by Vasco Pereira Coutinho, which filed for bankruptcy.

In addition to the new headquarters, which will concentrate all of its services and departments (and half of its staff at a national level), a new residential and commercial area will be built occupying a large part of the plot of land.

The project will cost between €100-120 million and will be financed by the receipts from the sale of the 11 buildings up for sale. For example, the current headquarters which has two façades facing Avenida da Liberdade and Rua Barata Salgueiro is likely to fetch over €50 million according to market sources.  

In March 2017, Novo Banco was acquired by the US fund Lone Star Funds, which bought a 75% of its capital share in exchange for a €1Bn capital injection. The other 25% is held by the bank’s  state-held resolution fund which resulted from the collapse of the former Banco Espírito Santo Group (GES) in 2015.

In October 2016, the resolution fund had received four offers on Novo Banco from China’s Minsheng Financial Holding, Apollo and Centerbridge and Lone Star. In January 2017,  Aethel Partners made an offer to buy Novo Banco.