The Bancolombia Group returns to the shopping centers sector, after the acquisition of 49 percent of Viva Malls.
This is a trust, owned by the Success Group, and in which it will have 51 percent as soon as the whole of this operation is completed. The Bancolombia Group, through its stake in Viva Malls for 2018, will have 14 assets of this type, of which twelve are already in operation: six commercial centers – two on the Atlantic Coast and the rest in Antioquia -, and six galleries (located in Bogotá and Medellín). (Read also: The small partners who arrive and those who leave the country’s signatures)
The other two are Viva Envigado and Viva Tunja, which, according to projections, will see the light in 2018 and with which it will have about 450,000 square meters of commercial operation.
It is worth remembering that the purchase of the trust was made by the Bancolombia Group through the Colombia Real Estate Fund (FIC), a business that had been ‘cooking’ since last September and in which it will invest, in total, 773,000 million pesos, through Of an injection of capital.
Of this total, the Bancolombia Group has already paid about 390,000 million pesos, as an initial contribution, and the remaining amount will be disbursed in the next 18 months.
The assets of Viva Mall are worth 1.6 trillion pesos.
«With Viva Malls – and with Bancolombia – we will initially reach eight cities,» added the president of the Éxito Group, Carlos Mario Giraldo.
After entering the shopping center business a few years ago, in October 2015, Banca de Inversión Bancolombia and the private equity fund Fondo Inmobiliario Colombia concluded their alliance with the Chilean firm Parque Arauco.
At that time, they sold him, for 45 million dollars, his 45 percent stake in the holding company Inversiones Inmobiliarias Arauco Alameda (Iara).