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By Pamela Barbaglia and Andrés González
LONDON/MADRID, Oct 29 (Reuters) - U.S. private equity groupCenterbridge Partners has appointed investment banks to sellSpanish property services firm Aktua, five sources familiar withthe matter said.
Centerbridge is seeking to take advantage of an improvementin the Spanish property market where valuations of real estateassets are recovering after taking a hit during Spain's economicdownturn.
The New York-based fund has hired Bank of America and Barclays to launch a sales process for the companywhich offers a wide range of real estate services includingproperty maintenance, rental collection and loan management, thesources said.
Bank of America and Barclays declined to comment whileCenterbridge had no immediate comment.
Aktua is expected to have core earnings of between 40 and 50million euros this year and could be valued at around 300million euros ($329 million), or 7 to 7.5 times its earningsbefore interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA),two of the sources said.
The company, which employs more than 400 people in Spain,has already drawn interest from a series of international buyoutfunds including London-based Permira, another source said.
Permira, which is in the process of selling two of itsSpanish portfolio companies, Cortefiel and Telepizza, declinedto comment.
The sale of Aktua has yet to start but bidders are alreadylining up to examine the asset and its growth potential, thesources said.
REAL ESTATE REBOUND
Aktua has roughly 5 billion euros of assets under managementof which 2.4 billion are real estate assets and the rest loans.
Based in Madrid, it makes an attractive consolidationplatform for private equity firms which could adopt a so-calledbuy and build strategy and combine it with other Spanishproperty management firms, the sources said.
This would generate a flurry of deals giving U.S. investors,which swooped on low-priced Spanish real estate assets duringthe financial crisis, an opportunity to capitalise from Spain'seconomic rebound.
Real estate prices dropped by more than 35 percent in Spainbetween 2007 and 2014, according to the national statisticsinstitute.
Centerbridge broke into the Spanish market in 2012. It paid100 million euros to buy Aktua from Spanish bank Banco Españolde Credito (Banesto).
Other U.S. investment fims could go down the same route anddivest property firms they've held for the past three years, oneof the sources said.
In 2013, New York-based buyout firm Apollo bought 85percent of Santander's property management unit Altamira for 664million euros.
Another Spanish bank, La Caixa, sold 51 percentof its real estate services arm, Servihabitat GestiónInmobiliaria, for 185 million euros in 2013. ($1 = 0.9112 euros) (Additional reporting by Freya Berry; editing by Adrian Croft)
