Finangeste celebrates 40th anniversary

Portugal’s oldest debt collection agency Finangeste, which has been operating in the market for 40 years, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

Founded in 1978, the company has a solid experience in acquiring and managing credit default and property portfolios.

Finangeste provides national and international investors with a raft of interlinked services such as the acquisition, management and recovery of complex credits, as well as the valuation and sale of large scale real estate projects and real estate projects management.

The company, currently led by Paul Henri Schelfhout, was in the news in Portugal in 2015 when the Bank of Portugal sold Finangeste, a company then worth €62 million, to Iseogoria Investments owned by Schelfhout and Sanjoy Kumar Chattopadhyay for €35 million, which at that time had €4 million of capital.

According to the weekly current affairs magazine Sabado, Isegoria Investments acquired the total  capital of Finangeste SA for €35,396,630 million. The purchased company’s main shareholder at the time (44%) was the Bank of Portugal who had valued Finangeste SA at €62,527,941.

The sale was announced days after H.I.G Capital, an investment firm based in the United States and managing a portfolio of €17 million, announced the purchase of two real estate asset portfolios from Finangeste, comprising 77 properties and 114 secured loans in total worth €110 million.