Davidson Kempner Agrees to Sell Portugal’s ECS to Draycott Henrique Almeida Davidson Kempner Capital Management has agreed to sell ECS, one of Portugal’s leading alternative asset and private investment managers, to Draycott. The deal has been notified to Portugal’s competition authority and remains subject to regulatory approvals, Draycott and ECS said in a statement. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Davidson Kempner, ECS’s current shareholder, will remain a strategic partner of the platform. Management of ECS’s existing funds, mandates and assets will remain unchanged, they said. ECS became one of Portugal’s biggest managers of distressed hotel and tourism assets following the country’s financial crisis.
Its funds amassed a large portfolio of hotels, resorts, golf courses and other real estate, much of which came from troubled loans and assets held by Portuguese banks. The US firm completed the acquisition of ECS at the end of 2022 for about €850 million, the biggest real estate deal that year. Davidson Kempner has since sold some of the assets amid a post-pandemic tourism boom, including the Conrad Algarve in southern Portugal’s Quinta do Lago resort for €150 million, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Draycott has been expanding its asset-management business and recently acquired Square Asset Management, one of the country’s largest independent real estate investment managers. The Portuguese alternative-asset manager, which has more than €3 billion under management, is led by founder and Chief Executive Officer João Coelho Borges.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing