ATHENS (Reuters) – Credit servicer doValue Greece, a subsidiary of Italy’s biggest debt recovery firm doValue, said on Tuesday it was awarded a new loan servicing mandate for a 500 million euro ($548.4 million) bad loan portfolio named Project Neptune.
The portfolio comprises small and medium-size business loans secured by real estate.
In 2020, an entity affiliated with funds managed by Fortress Investment Group bought the portfolio from Alpha Bank, one of Greece’s four biggest lenders, with a gross book value of about 1.1 billion euros. Fortress assigned transitional servicing to Greek loan servicing company Cepal.
DoValue will assume the servicing of about 50% of the initial portfolio comprising small business non-performing loans secured by real estate assets in Greece.
Greek banks have been cleaning up their balance sheets from NPLs via outright sales and securitisations in an effort to reach single-digit ratios to bring them close to euro zone averages.
Last October, doValue agreed a deal with National Bank, one of Greece’s largest lenders by assets, to service a 5.7 billion euro bad loan portfolio.
Verona-based doValue was set up in 2015 when UniCredit spun off its debt-servicing arm in a deal with Fortress Investment Group, the U.S. fund that was later bought by SoftBank.
($1 = 0.9118 euros)
(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Mike Harrison)
