Multiplan comes Back and Buys a lot of Diamond Mall -but only Half
Three days after saying it hadn’t completed its 49.9% purchase of Diamond Mall, Multiplan backtracked — but there wasn’t much to it. The shopping center company said yesterday it would buy 24.95% of the mall – one of three it controls in Belo Horizonte – leaving a quarter of the project in the hands of Clube Atlético Mineiro.
Multiplan will pay R$170 million – R$68 million in cash and R$102 million in 12 monthly installments. The deal includes a price of R$31,900 per square meter, “an attractive capitalization rate of 11.2%”, according to JP Morgan and Itaú BBA.
“Multiplan has a reputation for playing a lot of tough games and only making a deal if it’s too good for them,” said a source who has struck multiple deals with the company. The purchase of the stake was the result of the exercise of a right of first refusal – and it was a troubled deal.
Last August, Atlético received three offers for its participation – the best of which came from Ancar Ivanhoe, the holding company of 25 shopping centers, which offered to buy 100% of Atlético Center.
However, Multiplan said it would exercise its pre-emption – but then began moving forward with closing the deal. After the company announced on Monday that it would not go through with the deal, Atlético erupted in an explosion.
In talks with Multiplan, which included CEO José Isaac Peres, club officials threatened to go to the press to explain what was happening and seek compensation in court. “Multiplan doesn’t know what you’re getting into.
This is going to piss off the fans,” a source linked to Gallo said. “A lot of fans are consumers of their mall.” Multiplan – which created and integrated the mall – had already bought another 50.1% stake in 2017. The standoff with Multiplan comes at a time of financial fragility for Atlético, which has a debt of 1 .3 billion reais in the balance sheet for 2021.
Three businessmen from Minas Gerais – Rubens Menin, of MRV, Ricardo Guimarães, of Banco BMG, and Renato Salvador, of Mater Dei – financially supporting the club. Atlético still has another complication in the search for other interested parties: according to the agreement signed at the time of the creation of the mall, Multiplan has the right to retain 90% of the results of DiamondMall until 2026 and 100% until 2030.
” Who would be interested?” In an asset that will have no revenue between 2026 and 2030? said a sales analyst. “Multiplan had the deal in hand.” DiamondMall was Multiplan’s fifth-largest mall by sales in the square meter in the third quarter of 2022.
