Värde Partners Wins Bid to Manage €800 Million Sareb Residential Development Portfolio

MADRID – Värde Partners, a leading global alternative investment firm, today announced an agreement with The Management Company for Assets Arising from the Banking Sector Reorganisation, known as Sareb, to manage a portfolio of over €800 million residential development assets in Spain.

As part of the transaction, certain Värde funds will also acquire a 10% stake in the newly-formed Bank Asset Fund (FAB) that will hold the assets. The assets will be managed and developed by Aelca, a Spanish residential developer and asset management company owned by Värde.

“We are pleased to have been selected for this mandate by Sareb following a competitive evaluation process. We believe this underscores the remarkable quality of the Aelca platform and our team in Spain,” said Francisco Milone, Partner and Head of European Real Estate at Värde Partners. “We look forward to establishing a long-term partnership with Sareb and converting these assets into thousands of homes across Spain.”

In January 2019, Värde-owned Via Célere acquired the land bank assets of Aelca, making Via Célere one of the largest residential developers in Spain with a gross asset value of over €2.2 billion. Aelca continues to operate as an independent residential developer and manager.

Värde Partners established its office in Spain in 2014, now operating out of Madrid, and has invested $5.5 billion in real estate assets across Europe since 2006.

Värde Partners was advised by Clifford Chance and Alantra. Sareb was advised by Garrigues and Colliers International.

About Sareb
The Management Company for Assets Arising from the Banking Sector Reorganisation (Sareb) is a private institution created in November 2012, to help clean up the Spanish financial sector, and more specifically the institutions that received government funding. Sareb is committed to selling the properties and loans acquired prior to November 2027. A total of 32 private companies comprise the majority of Sareb’s shareholders including banks, insurance companies, real estate companies and one electricity company. The State owns 45.90%, via the FROB (Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring).

About Värde Partners
Värde Partners is a $14 billion global alternative investment firm that employs a value-based approach to investing across a broad array of geographies, segments and asset types, including corporate and traded credit, real estate, mortgages, financial services, real assets and infrastructure. The firm sponsors and manages a family of private investment funds with a global investor base that includes foundations and endowments, pension plans, insurance companies, other institutional investors and private clients. Now in its third decade, Värde employs more than 300 people globally with regional headquarters in Minneapolis, London and Singapore.

A Group of Investors Led by Värde Partners and Guber Banca Acquired a Non-Performing Loan Portfolio Originated by 22 Italian Mutual, Rural, and Cooperative Banks (GBV €734 Million)

A group of investors led by Värde Partners and Guber Banca, working with Barclays as their financial institution partner, announced today the joint acquisition of a non-performing loan portfolio originated by 22 mutual, rural, and cooperative banks spread throughout Italy. The gross book value (GBV) of the portfolio is approximately €734 million.

The portfolio comprises more than 1,300 positions, most of which are secured. The loans were originated mainly in the Northeast and in the Northwest of Italy.

The portfolio was purchased by a securitization vehicle issuing multi-tranche notes. The senior notes (70%) will be underwritten by the seller banks and the junior notes will be majority financed by Värde Partners.

Guber Banca will hold a minority share of the notes and will also act as servicer of the portfolio.

This transaction follows the previously announced acquisition of a €1.397 billion GBV NPL portfolio in July 2018.

Francesco Guarneri, CEO of Guber Banca, commented: “We are very pleased to have successfully completed the second tranche of the deal with CCB (Cassa Centrale Banca) which has reached a total of €2.1 billion (adding the first tranche with the second one), a market deal without any Government guarantee”.

Francisco Milone, Partner and Head of European Real Estate at Värde Partners added: “Italy is an incredibly important market for our firm. Värde’s deep expertise investing in NPLs across the globe combined with our local team in Italy and relationship with Guber support our activity in the Italian NPL market”.

Centrale Credit & Real Estate Solutions (CCRES) – part of Gruppo Cassa Centrale Banca Credito Cooperativo Italiano – and Banca IMI (Intesa Sanpaolo Group) acted as advisors of the sellers, coordinating both the origination and sale processes. CCRES and Banca IMI acted also as arrangers in projecting a new securitization to be managed through a multi-originator platform for the securitization of NPLs originated by cooperative banks. Such platform confirms to be a valid instrument to support cooperative banks struggling to sell their NPLs.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP acted as legal advisor for the buyers.

About Guber Banca
Guber, founded in 1991 by Francesco Guarneri and Gianluigi Bertini, is one of the leading players in the credit Management industry in Italy with approximately €9 billion euro of credits under management. In April 2018, the global alternative investment firm Värde Partners joined Guber’s founding partners through the acquisition of 33.3% stake of the company. Guber operates throughout Italy with more than 180 employees and associates, overseeing the national territory thanks to a network of more than 280 corresponding lawyers. Guber, specialized in the management and recovery of non-performing loan portfolios, both unsecured and mortgage loans, is also active in the macro areas dedicated to the direct purchase of loans, due diligence & advisory services, also in the real estate sector. After obtaining a banking license from the ECB in March 2018, Guber started operating as a bank with the launch of a new escrow account, Deposito102. (www.deposito102).

About Värde Partners
Värde Partners is a $14 billion global alternative investment firm that employs a value-based approach to investing across a broad array of geographies, segments and asset types, including corporate and traded credit, real estate, mortgages, financial services, real assets and infrastructure. The firm sponsors and manages a family of private investment funds with a global investor base that includes foundations and endowments, pension plans, insurance companies, other institutional investors and private clients. Now in its third decade, Värde employs more than 300 people globally with regional headquarters in Minneapolis, London and Singapore. Värde has invested approximately $2 billion in Italy in over ten years and opened an office in Milan in 2014.

Why Getting Workplace Diversity Right Isn’t for the Faint-Hearted

I am living proof that diversity doesn’t just happen because you have diverse leadership. When my two male co-founders and I set out to build an independent investment business in our hometown of Minneapolis 25 years ago, we never thought that 33% would be our strongest showing in gender diversity for our investment staff. A few years ago, we looked back at the numbers and set out to change that.

When George Hicks, Greg McMillan and I formed Värde Partners in 1993, we did not dictate the culture, but our decisions set the tone early on. Before we even launched, we instinctively understood – and shared the belief – that we were stronger by leveraging our mix of capabilities, skills, and even personalities. In today’s diversity and inclusion parlance, we intentionally sought to maximize our Collective Intelligence and our Cognitive Diversity. We also chose to avoid the cult of personality that is so often associated with this business and, instead of putting our names on the door, we named the company Värde, which means “value” in Swedish.

As the business grew, those fundamentals evolved into a distinctive culture of which I am personally very proud. Being a woman in the male-dominated field of alternative investing never seemed to hinder my success. That success, however, may have led me to overlook the fact that we weren’t maintaining gender diversity among our own investing professionals.

When I transitioned into my current role as executive chair in 2016, we took a hard look at the data around diversity, both at Värde and within the industry. I was naturally drawn to the gender data, where it was evident that the rate of change in financial services has been nothing short of glacial.

Research suggests that, at the current rate of change, financial services globally will not reach that magical 30% critical mass of women in executive positions until 2048 – I hope to live that long! I was further disappointed that Värde’s numbers – in recruiting, hiring and retention of female investment professionals – were not much better than the industry averages, particularly in light of our enviable culture and my female leadership. I felt a deep sense of responsibility to improve that in an accelerated way.

My passion these days is the intersection of talent and organizations that are purpose-driven, performance-oriented and principles-led. One of my views is that there is a widening gap between the growing complexity and sophistication that is required in investing and the static approach the industry takes to its most strategic asset: the one that goes up and down the elevator every day. Another personal point of view is that good intentions are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure a portfolio of talent that is diverse and inclusive. There is no substitute for purposeful actions to close the gap between aspiration and reality.

At Värde, we saw that we had to take deliberate actions in order to change things. Figuring out where to start felt daunting, but we benefitted from having a strong culture and a willingness to do an organizational reset. We realized that our core values of collegiality, excellence, humility, innovation and integrity could serve as guideposts in the process.

I often analogize creating an effective diversity and inclusion strategy with running a simultaneous “air war” and “ground war”. In other words, you need to start with the right tone from the top, while also ensuring policy changes are being practiced at the line manager level. You need leadership to walk the talk and make clear that diversity is a business imperative and not an HR initiative. You must also pay very close attention to every minority talent in your organization – and always know that your people will immediately see inconsistencies between messages and behaviors.

We scrutinized our recruiting, hiring, review, and promotion processes, and analyzed our retention of women in the investment side of our business. While some of this self-examination was admittedly painful, it helped shape our current views – and practices – toward developing a more diverse bench of investing talent.

While some changes were bigger than others, we saw that even seemingly small research-based changes we implemented could have an outsized impact. For example, we set a minimum of two female candidates per investing role. Of course, every candidate needs to be qualified, but making that demand often pushed our people to look beyond their immediate networks. We also review job descriptions to de-bias language, we review all resumes for a role at the same time, and we run a structured interview process.

In looking at reviews and promotions, it became clear we needed to better mitigate unconscious bias in these processes. In addition to individual managers being responsible for recommending promotions, we also conduct those assessments by committee. One change I advocate any organization to make is dropping self-evaluations from a review process. This behavior is not exclusive to Värde or investment professionals – but women consistently rate their performance lower than men do, which can certainly lead to unintended bias in reviews and talent performance rankings (and self-inflicted, no less).

Since Värde has focused on increasing female diversity among our investment professionals, I am pleased to report that we have doubled our women professionals to nearly 20%, and we are well on our way to an intermediate goal of one-quarter by 2020. It requires a long-term commitment.

I’m an optimist at heart and I love big opportunities. Increasing diversity in the alternative investing industry is one of them. Since we started to make progress at Värde, I wanted to extend my influence and assistance on this issue to other industry participants. I’ve met with numerous other firms – many of which have strong diversity and inclusion efforts – and there is no dearth of interest in this topic. The industry knows diversity matters to achieve the best business results. We need to do a better – and more deliberate – job of increasing the absolute numbers in the pipeline and ensuring that high-performing women have a fair shot at senior leadership roles.

Many organizations will need to reset their cultures to create workplaces that fully leverage their diverse talent. This starts by creating the conditions that influence behaviors and mindsets.

We saw the impact that moving from intuition to data-driven results could have, and I encourage others to hard-wire their organizations, including:

• Ensuring that your culture is truly inclusive and enables everyone to bring their “whole self” to work;

• Designing organizational processes to mitigate unconscious bias in hiring and promotion;

• Providing learning opportunities and leadership development to build a bench of leaders that are skilled and inspiring;

• Drawing out emerging talent and empowering them through sponsors and mentoring programs.

This is a demanding and competitive industry to work in, and the stakes are high. We are investing the assets of institutions that provide for the greater good: endowments, foundations, pension funds and more. Our ability to help fulfill their missions is dependent upon high-performing talent and inclusive leadership. We know that a team comprised of individuals with diverse backgrounds makes us better investors and better corporate citizens. I feel confident that driving this change will benefit our employees, clients and the millions of people they serve.

Written by Marcia Page, Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Värde Partners. Originally published in March 2019 by World Economic Forum.

Värde Partners Names New Partners, Additional Deputy CIO

MINNEAPOLIS, LONDON and SINGAPORE – Värde Partners is pleased to announce the appointment of Elena Lieskovska and Haseeb Malik to Partner, and the promotion of Brad Bauer to Deputy Chief Investment Officer.

“It gives me great pleasure to announce the promotions of three individuals who have been instrumental in the success of our firm through their investing expertise, leadership and integrity,” said George Hicks, Co-Founder and CEO of Värde Partners. “Brad, Elena and Haseeb have all made significant contributions to Värde’s culture, global presence, and, most importantly, delivering returns to our investors.”

Based in London, Elena is Head of European Financial Services, responsible for Värde’s private equity investments in specialty finance companies and related businesses in Europe. She joined the firm in 2008 and over the past decade has helped establish the firm as a leader in the consumer finance space, building large credit platforms.

Haseeb is Head of Asia Corporate and Traded Credit. Based in Singapore since the office opened in 2008, he joined the firm in 2006 and helped build the firm’s presence in large corporate restructurings in the region. Most recently, he led the establishment of Värde’s local presence in India, a key market for the firm.

Based in Minneapolis since joining Värde in 2007, Brad will relocate to London in the coming months. In addition to his new role as Deputy CIO, Brad is a Partner and Global Head of Private Debt, Transportation and Energy.

Brad joins Värde’s global CIO team, comprising Ilfryn Carstairs and Jeremy Hedberg, Partners and Co-CIOs, and Giuseppe Naglieri, Partner, Deputy CIO and Global Co-Head of Corporate and Traded Credit. With Brad’s move to London, Värde will have a CIO presence in each region, with Ilfryn in Singapore and Jeremy and Giuseppe in Minneapolis.

About Värde Partners
Värde Partners is a $14 billion global alternative investment firm that employs a value-based approach to investing across a broad array of geographies, segments and asset types, including corporate and traded credit, real estate, mortgages, financial services, real assets and infrastructure. The firm sponsors and manages a family of private investment funds with a global investor base that includes foundations and endowments, pension plans, insurance companies, other institutional investors and private clients. Now in its third decade, Värde employs more than 300 people globally with regional headquarters in Minneapolis, London and Singapore.