Investors target post-covid Spain with large capital flows

Spain and Portugal are attracting keen interest from investors and the post-pandemic capital raising potential is consequently considerably stronger than after the global financial crisis.

Investor and asset manager Azora’s head of fundraising Rodrigo Cortés explained that after the GFC the flow of capital stopped abruptly and from 2009 to 2013 there was little capital flow apart from opportunistic investment.

“But fast-forward to where we are today, we haven’t seen a stop in investment in Spain,” he told Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts.

Even though in 2020 capital did not flows to the same extent as in 2019 – at about €8 billion it was roughly 30% less than in 2019 it was well above GFC levels. Azora raised €680 million in June 2020. “Obviously we were in advance discussions with those investors, but the commitments weren’t signed pre-covid they were signed post-covid.”

And he said that the amount of capital that the company will be raising in 2021 is going to be substantially above 2020 targets. “If you put all of our vehicles together we’re probably targeting a raise which is just shy of €1 billion in 2021,” he said. “We feel confident that we can that we can raise that capital because we have that good interaction with big institutional investors who are very interested in investing in Spain.”

Click on the video above to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.