Antonio Llera, who comes from Deloitte, joins the Barcelona team to deal with higher value-added operations, and Javier Galindo and Ignacio Martín expand the Madrid team, doubling its current capacity.

2024 marks the tenth anniversary of Altria Corpo and the year begins with important additions in the Corporate Finance Area that will further boost the business, level of service and advice for medium and large companies.

In Barcelona we are very proud to have Antonio Llera, a professional with extensive experience in corporate debt advisory and restructuring. In recent years he has held the position of senior manager in the Debt Advisory and Restructuring division of two of the most renowned financial consultancies for large companies, KPMG and Deloitte. Previously, he was at Banco Santander, where he held various positions in its Corporate and Investment Banking division, as well as in Structured Finance Risk. Antonio holds a degree in Business Administration and Management from the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas (ICADE) and several postgraduate degrees in finance from the IEB and Eada Business School.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, an office we opened in the summer of 2022 with two consultants, we have decided to increase our service capacity with two new professionals, taking into account the enormous potential of the business market in the Madrid region and the greater reach it gives us for the business fabric of the rest of Spain. Javier Galindo and Ignacio Martín have joined us to add value to their experience in business financing.

Javier Galindo is a professional expert in corporate finance with special emphasis on financing solutions for capital goods and other productive assets. He has spent most of his career in the Spanish branch of the renowned German financial group AKF Bank. Previously, he worked at CESCE, Agco Finance and ALD Automotive (Société Générale Group). Javier holds a degree in Economics from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master in Financial Management from ESIC, complemented with training in auditing, insurance and foreign trade.

Ignacio (Nacho) Martín has more than 30 years of professional experience in different sectors, always related to the financial and business world. For 14 years he worked in the banking sector as a Business Manager and Director of Business Offices in leading financial institutions. He has managed different companies, and in recent years he has broadened his experience with the management of commercial teams in the insurance sector for companies. Nacho has a law degree from the Complutense University of Madrid, complemented by courses in finance and business management at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Carlos III University of Madrid.

We welcome these new additions and wish them every success at Altria Corpo.

Altria Corpo is a financial consultancy for medium and large companies, founded in 2014 by Albert Gumà and based in Barcelona. Its main services are advice on debt and equity financing, and access to more than 200 financial providers including banks, alternative financing, debt funds and other instruments. In its 10 years of existence, Altria Corpo has positioned itself as a benchmark in the search for financing for medium and large companies, with an accumulated amount advised of more than 450 million and more than 800 operations. The scope of the companies advised covers the whole of Spain, with a concentration in Madrid and Catalonia, which account for 80% of the total amount advised.

Altria Corpo’s partners, Albert Gumà and Ramiro Lama, and its Managing Director Eloi Noya, have prepared a working paper on direct lending that has been published by the Observatory of Financial Disclosure (ODF) of the prestigious Institute of Financial Studies (IEF).

Please find attached the link to this document: https://www.iefweb.org/es/publicacion-odf/el-direct-lending-una-alternativa-creciente-en-la-financiacion-a-empresas/

In this report, the authors reflect on the phenomenon of direct lending, which emerged in the second decade of the 21st century as one of the new forms of alternative financing to traditional banking and those provided by the capital markets. Among these alternative instruments, private debt funds stand out, aimed at financing business projects of various kinds. One of the most relevant subsets of this category of private debt is direct lending, which emerged after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008.

Through direct lending, the segment of small and medium-sized enterprises, which has always been highly dependent on bank financing, now has an alternative when it comes to financing the various needs it may have, such as organic growth, the acquisition of other companies or the restructuring of its debt maturities. Direct lending is also interesting from an investment point of view, as it makes available an asset class such as corporate loans. This new asset class has a higher return than similar markets such as bond markets, for example, although certain disadvantages such as lower liquidity or the usual lack of credit ratings must also be taken into account.

In short, this document describes the main characteristics of direct lending as a form of financing, which in turn constitutes an interesting alternative for investors. It aims to analyse in some detail the advantages and disadvantages of direct lending, the critical factors to be taken into account, as well as the economic, regulatory and sustainable policy framework in which this activity is being developed in Europe.

Spanish Government approved the extension of the Recovery Plan this week. The European Next Generation programme will support 84,000 loans included in this addendum, as well as 7.7 billion in transfers and 2.2 billion from the REPowerEU mechanism. Among the programmes to which these resources will be allocated is the Official Credit Institute (ICO), which will mobilise 4 billion in relation to the promotion of social rental housing and whose loans will be subject to an interest rate of 4%.

Vice-president Nadia Calviño announced that the ICO and other banking institutions will have 22.5 billion to deploy lines of financing to entrepreneurs, companies, green projects and especially in the tourism sector. The loans will create funds to finance technology start-ups and the Spanish audiovisual sector. These loans will also reinforce the structural funds, creating a security cushion of 3 billion “to give credibility to entrepreneurs and employees in the event of an economic setback” according to the Ministry of Economy.

In addition, the regional governments will receive funds for sustainable investment from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The EIB will be responsible for distributing these funds according to the financial viability of the plans submitted by the regional governments to obtain financing.

The extension of the Recovery Plan will also mobilise 28.3 billion to reinforce 12 Perte projects, including the Chip and ERHA Perte – aimed at deploying renewable energy – and the Water Cycle Digitalisation Perte. It is expected to include 18 reforms that will complement the existing ones in terms of energy and correction of the distortion in the supply-demand ratio of the labour market.

Undoubtedly, good news for Spanish companies that have new financing instruments. At Altria Corpo we advise on these and other financial solutions, both banking and alternative.

The Spanish economy is based on SMEs. Not only do they represent 99.8% of the total number of companies, but also 62% of Gross Value Added (GVA) and 66% of total business employment. However, one of the drawbacks for economic growth in our country is the low percentage of medium-sized companies and an excessive concentration of companies that are too small in size.

In Spain, there are fewer than 20,000 medium-sized companies, considering in this segment those with between 51 and 250 employees. If we add as a criterion those with a turnover of more than 50 million euros, the figure drops to only 3,300, and if we exclude those that are not foreign subsidiaries, the total does not exceed 1,800.

There is a direct relationship between the size of companies and the development of a country’s economy, since an increase in volume favours investment in innovation and therefore productivity, which impacts, among other aspects, on better jobs and real wages. Larger size also correlates with higher survival rates in times of economic crisis. In terms of financing, size undoubtedly also matters, since, in addition to better risk assessment by traditional banks, there is also greater availability of alternative financing, with many financial providers dedicated to this segment. Thus, we can count on direct lending funds for these medium-sized companies with the possibility of loans from one million euros and great flexibility in their repayment, and a wide variety of possibilities depending on the need, economic sector and guarantees provided. Having a financial advisor such as Altria Corpo will help to obtain the best alternative according to each circumstance.