Lion Capital sells from real estate holdings

Lion Capital, formerly SIF Banat-Crişana, has sold or signed promises of sale for a series of real estate assets in the portfolio, as shown in the reports published on the website of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

The Board of Directors of SIFI Cluj Retail, a company owned by SIFI Imobiliare, signed on March 12 a bilateral promise of sale and purchase of all the real estate and fixed assets it owns, for the price of 24.38 million euros (excluding VAT), the transaction being subject to the approval of the shareholders, i.e. ultimately Lion Capital.

According to the latest annual report of SIFI Imobiliare, SIFI Cluj Retail owns buildings located in Cluj-Napoca whose total area is 18,218 square meters, the degree of occupancy at the end of the year being 96%. "The company intends to develop a real estate project, the zonal urban plan of which was approved in May 2021," the report also stated.

Also on March 12, SIFI Imobiliare signed the transaction documents by which it sold all 59,940 shares held in the company SIFI BH Retail Oradea, representing 99.9% of its share capital for the sum of 9.49 million euros and 0.47 million lei. By the time the report was published, SIFI Imobiliare had collected 27.9 million lei, according to BVB documents.

"The company owns buildings located in Oradea and its surroundings, whose total area available for rent is approximately 12,000 square meters, the degree of occupancy at the end of the year being 87%", according to the SIFI Imobiliare report.

SIFI Imobiliare is 99.99% controlled by Lion Capital. In 2020, someone inflated the Net Assets of what was then SIF-Banat Crişana with amounts of hundreds of millions or even a billion lei, through sporadic transactions of a few hundred lei, with one share of SIFI Imobiliare. In the last almost four years, no transaction was made with SIFI shares, a company which, according to the data on the BVB website, has a capitalization of 2.3 billion lei.