Portugal’s largest hunting estate sold

 In News, Novo Banco, Real Estate

A Portuguese millionaire entrepreneur has acquired the Herdade do Vale Feitoso – the largest fenced estate property in Portugal.

Ricardo Machado, who has a dispute over €1Bn running in court against General Electric and the Angolan State, owns the estate which covers 7,300 hectares, of which 1,200 is a hunting reservation for wealthy national and international game hunting tourists. He is now the new owner of the land.
The Herdade do Vale Feitoso at Idanha-a-Nova in the district of Castelo Branco, is the largest private property in Portugal and one of the largest on the Iberian peninsula.
The estate was purchased by the Espírito Santo Group (GES) in 2004 when it was converted by its chairman Ricardo Salgado and his family into a ranch for parties and a hunting ground for wealthy friends and patrons.
In 2014 GES collapsed and the company owner of the estate, Companhia Agrícola de Penha Garcia, went bankrupt.
The assets had been mortgaged to Novobanco and were then declared insolvent in February 2017 in a process in which bank claimed loans of €53.3 million.
The bank tied to sell off the estate and assets that had belonged to the bankrupt company Penha Garcia through various sale processes, each of which failed, each time the asking price driven lower and lower.
In 2021 the estate was eventually sold to a real estate fund held by the Spanish group Tenigla.
It has now been bought for “a more substantial amount” than the €20.7 million paid by the Spanish fund.
Ricardo Machado says that he will “maintain the €50 million investment” which the Spanish group had announced for Vale Feitoso, turning it into a self-sustainable estate while also acquiring more forestry and fishing assets in Portugal.
The project will now form part of other investments that Machado says he owns in Portugal in the south and centre of Portugal and its islands in energy and food production and tourism.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Machado and his company A Energy has various ongoing legal suits in civil and arbitration courts in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Angola against the US Company General Electric and the Republic of Angola.