Ignacio Buil Aldana Alicia Galindo Aragoncillo The Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria (SAREB), also known as Spain's 'bad bank', created in November 2012, has become one of the major players in the distressed market. Since mid-2013, it has sold approximately 9000 assets for €3,500 million and still holds billions of euros of assets, which makes SAREB a very relevant lender of record in many distressed situations in Spain. Despite SAREB's key role in the distressed market, it has been unclear whether it should be deemed a financial entity in the context of a Spanish Scheme (such schemes apply exclusively to financial entities according to Spanish law) and, therefore, whether SAREB should be taken into consideration for majority purposes; and, more importantly, whether SAREB could be crammed-down under a Spanish Scheme. SAREB's activity is supervised by European authorities and by Spanish authorities (such as the Bank of Spain), even if it is not per se a financial entity due to its particular nature and its specific corporate purpose.
January 24 2014
