Established a few months ago by Brazilian private equity firm GP group, Altere Securitizadora is officially open for business. Earlier this month, the agency closed its first deal using an entrenched financing vehicle for construction company Grupo Walter Torre.
The transaction reached R$9.8 million (US$3.4 million), and pricing was 12.5% over the IGPM price index. Fitch Ratings gave the deal a rating of A(bra)’ on the national scale. Maximo Lima, a director of Altere, characterizes the fledgling agency as a marriage of the expertise of traditional securitizers and the distributive capacity of a bank. Securitizers, he said, often lack a strong sales network. But with backing from the GP group, “we’re managing to bridge the gap,” he added.
The deal replicates others that the Walter Torre family has executed in Brazil and exported to Mexico (see ASR 9/8, p.20). In the Altere transaction, a unit of WT sold into a trust rent receivables owed by Brazilian subsidiaries of the Unilever Group. As such, the deal is bound to Unilever risk, but as deemed by Fitch, its creditworthiness is not quite on par with the global consumer giant. Unilever rates A+’ on the global scale, in theory a good deal higher than the transaction, given that the national scale has the sovereign at AAA’, while its foreign currency global scale rating is B’.
Altere aims to push further into real estate, Lima said. The securitizer is looking at deals in the sector employing the investment fund structure already used for other assets (see top article).
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