A 36 asset portfolio located in Spain and placed on the market by Mercadona in mid-March, when the pandemic was gaining stride in Europe, is on the negotiations table. If this operation is successful, the operator will receive 200 million euro guaranteeing the assets’ cost-effectiveness, since it should remain to manage them.
«We currently own a number of buildings, as a result of acquisitions of terrains and establishments during the last few years and we have now decided to sell them», explained Mercadona, which owns a total 1.6 million sqm in assets.
The sale & leaseback formula is, in fact, a strategy already in wide use by the great Spanish retail groups. Within the last 5 years alone, El Corte Inglés, Inditex and Makro, together, received 1.300 million euro from operations of this type, according to newspaper Expansión.
El Corte Inglés received almost 800 million euro, 300 million of which in 2019 alone. Inditex Group carried out a mega-operation in 2018 by selling 14 retail spaces located in the main Iberian cities for 400 million euro. And Makro sold buildings Barajas, Alcobendas and Paseo Imperial, located in Madrid for 90 million euro in 2018.