The Investment and Real Estate Management Companies (SIGI) regime was created more than two years ago, but in this period only one SIGI was created, belonging to Sonae Sierra and Bankinter, Ores. Euronext guarantees that "interest in the legal system of SIGI remains" but admits that "the fact that there is only one SIGI in the current regime suggests that it may not be sufficiently attractive for companies and/or investors".
Speaking to Eco, Euronext Lisbon assumes that it may be necessary to change the regime of this body to make it more attractive. It states that "some aspects of the current regime have been the subject of special attention by those involved in the sector, such as the composition of assets held by SIGI or the degree of dispersion of their capital, in order to make the regime more flexible and attractive".
Euronext considers that the investor participation threshold is one of the aspects that could be changed, namely reduced. The law says that SIGI must have at least 11 shareholders with less than 2% equity to secure a minimum 20% equity.
On the other hand, the issue of refinancing credits for the acquisition of real estate assets could also be "moved", no longer being "considered in the calculation of SIGI's assets".
In any case, Euronext claims that it has been working on proposals to "improve the regime and make it more attractive" with various associations in the sector, and hopes "to be able to debate [the topic] with the next Government".
João Cristina, responsible for Merlin Properties in Portugal, one of the largest Spanish SOCIMIs, attests that this model is not yet viable for the company, and says that the fiscal transparency regime may be the main reason that explains the weak adherence of investors to the SIGI.
He explains that "the SIGI regime is, in a way, limited to Portuguese companies" and that "does not allow international REITs to qualify as similar to SIGI", namely with regard to the fiscal transparency regime. Compared with the SOCIMIs regime, the Portuguese regime “should comply with the principle of reciprocity”.
It exemplifies that "if a REIT invests in Spain or France, the same tax regime applies", but if "an international REIT wants to invest in Portugal, it has to form a SIGI and spread the capital on the stock exchange", distinction between nationalities that it may imply “taxation on the distribution of dividends” in Portugal, which does not happen in other countries.
«The change takes place through trial and error and in Spain it was the same. Portugal will have to go through the same process and that seems obvious to me today, because if there's only one SIGI so far, it's because something isn't going well. The fine tuning hasn't been done yet, but it will end up being done», concludes the person in charge, cited by the same source.
