Bitcoin Gains Traction amid Steady Growth in Indonesia

Indonesia, one of the world’s most beautiful archipelagoes and travel destinations, has had a consistent increase in bitcoin adoption at popular tourist spots including Bali, Jakarta and Denpasar, since the launch of BitIslands in March 2014.

Initiated by the largest Indonesian Bitcoin exchange Bitcoin Indonesia, the project was sponsored by leading Bitcoin merchant platforms and mobile services in Asia, including a Singaporean startup Coin of Sale, Artabit, CoinPip, Quantified, Tukarcash and Bitwyre. Since 2014, Bitcoin Indonesia continued to aggressively push the project in Bali, where BitIslands launched a bitcoin Information Center and Bali’s first offline Bitcoin exchange.

Due to the increase of bitcoin’s market awareness and merchant adoption, the majority of the locals started to use bitcoin online, and began to appreciate bitcoin’s low transaction fees and speed, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“Most Indonesians currently use bitcoin to pay for services online, such as web hosting. They can also use the digital currency to book hotel rooms through travel websites hosted overseas rather than use credit cards, which only a small percentage of the population currently own,” the Journal article says.

Furthermore, major bitcoin exchanges such as Bitcoin Indonesia have seen a substantial growth in both the number of users and daily trading volumes. The largest bitcoin exchange in Indonesia currently trades around 200 bitcoin daily and supports more than 56,000 users.

“Many people think that Bitcoin is unheard of in Indonesia, but the fact is its popularity is soaring now,” Bitcoin Indonesia CEO Oscar Darmawan said.

In September 2014, several projects emerged to increase bitcoin mainstream adoption in the nation, by allowing Indonesian residents to purchase bitcoin at popular stores or tourist spots. The project ran by Bitcoin Indonesia enabled users of its exchange to purchase bitcoin at any of the 10,000 Indomarket convenience stores via a partnership with iPaymu, a merchant payment platform.

Such services, along with the rising volume of Bitcoin exchanges, influenced Indonesian merchants to accept bitcoin in other parts of Indonesia apart from Bali, where most of the Bitcoin projects began. Currently, Indonesia has more than 50 Bitcoin merchants, and the majority are located in Denpasar.

Rise of Bitcoin Start-ups

Since early 2015, some Bitcoin start-ups began to relocate to Indonesia, targeting the poor banking systems and payment infrastructure of the country. One of the start-ups was Blossom, which recently moved from San Francisco to Indonesia to offer the country’s first bitcoin-based global lending/investing platform.

Blossom connects international investors to small businesses in Indonesia which are ready to launch. Through an established local microfinance institution, Blossom delivers the bitcoin funds to the businesses. After 12 months, profits from the businesses are collected to be distributed to the investors, with around 7.5 percent to 12.5 percent in return.

“In conventional investment, I have to rely on the statements and numbers publicized by my partners. With Bitcoin, it’s clear to everyone what’s going on,” said founder Matthew Martin.

As the number of bitcoin merchants and trading volumes continue to grow at a consistent rate, Bitcoin startups and establishments, including Bitcoin Indonesia, aim to achieve mainstream bitcoin adoption in popular tourist spots in the country.

CMBS Delinquencies Unchanged in March as Loan Liquidations Remain Low

Trepp, LLC, the leading provider of information, analytics, and technology to the CMBS, commercial real estate, and banking markets, released its March 2015 US CMBS Delinquency Report today.

The Trepp CMBS Delinquency Rate was unchanged in March, interrupting the recent string of falling delinquencies. After falling for four consecutive months, the delinquency rate for US commercial real estate loans in CMBS remains 5.58%. The percentage of seriously delinquent loans, defined as those 60+ days delinquent, in foreclosure, REO, or non-performing balloons, fell one basis point to 5.41%.

Almost $1.1 billion in CMBS loans became newly delinquent in March, bringing total delinquencies to $29.4 billion, slightly below the total as of month-end February. Over $800 million loans were cured last month, while $570 million loans that were previously delinquent paid off either at par or with a loss.

The decline in the pace of loan resolutions does not come as a surprise. After a torrid pace in 2012 and 2013, liquidations have slowed for the time being. As the market gets further into the cycle of 2006 and 2007 10-year loans reaching their maturities, Trepp expects liquidation volume numbers to start to pick up again.

"The financial markets were turbulent in March, but the CMBS market remained a sea of tranquility," said Manus Clancy, Senior Managing Director at Trepp. "While market watchers were worried about lower US GDP, an overly strong dollar, and sagging corporate earnings, the CMBS market was as steady as could be. Spreads remained largely unchanged in March, new issuance was solid, CMBS volatility was light, and the delinquency rate was flat. That performance compared to the big whipsaws in US stock prices seemingly each day in March."

Why Chinese companies rush to buy Manhattan's commercial property

Chinese investors' rapidly growing appetite for high-profile U.S. commercial properties has been highlighted as China's Anbang Insurance Group Co., the buyer of luxury hotel Waldorf Astoria, has agreed to buy 21 floors of an office building on the famed Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, recently.

The coveted building is located at 717 Fifth Avenue on East 56th Street. Anbang will buy it from Blackstone Group, the leading U.S. private equity firm. The cost would be between 400 million to 500 million U.S. dollars. It is said that Anbang would only buy the office portion, which starts from floor 5 to 26. The first four floors for retail are not included.

This Chinese insurer has made headlines with the acquisition of Waldorf Astoria, the landmark hotel on Park Avenue last October. Under the agreement, Anbang purchased the iconic luxury hotel for 1.95 billion dollars from Hilton Worldwide Holdings.

Anbang Insurance Group Co. is one of China's comprehensive group companies in insurance business. According to corporate sources, Anbang has been developing stably and reached a total asset of 800 billion yuan (about 130 billion U.S. dollars).

Anbang is not alone. Other Chinese companies are also caught in the craze of buying into Manhattan commercial real estate, which is regarded as a "safe heaven."

In June 2013, the family of Zhang Xin, chief executive officer of Chinese real estate developer Soho, together with a Brazilian partner bought a 40 percent stake in General Motors Building for about 700 million dollars. Shanghai-based Fosun International Ltd. bought the One Chase Manhattan Plaza, the landmark building of lower Manhattan in December 2013 from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for a consideration of 725 million U.S. dollars.

Also, the Bank of China reached a deal in December to buy a Manhattan office tower for nearly 600 million dollars.

Chinese companies believe that they could achieve stable returns from the U.S. commercial real estate. "Given the strong performance in the past, the group intends to realize long-term stable investment return by investing in high quality real properties in North America. Going forward it will increase the share of overseas assets in asset allocation, taking Europe and North America as priority areas," Anbang said after its Waldorf acquisition.

The recovering of U.S. economy has boosted the rents and transactions of office buildings, especially in big cities like New York. And foreign buyers are going after top-of-the-line properties in Manhattan.

The New York City property investment sales market saw 442 deals close last year, shattering the previous record of 346 deals in 2007. The year of 2014 was also the second most active year in terms of dollar volume, with 39.8 billion dollars in business volume, second only to the 48.5 billion dollars struck in 2007, according to a report of Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting company.

Looking forward, "foreign capital is likely to continue to aggressively pursue opportunities, seeking long-term capital appreciation in what is viewed as the world's largest and most stable market. The dollar is also rising against major currencies. Dividends and future sale prices will be exchanged in appreciated dollars to foreign investors. With many local private market and private equity funds also actively looking for new properties, there will be no shortage of demand for Manhattan office buildings, " Commercial Real Estate service company Colliers International said in a recent report.

For many Chinese companies, overseas investment is also a kind of asset allocation diversification. Anbang said it has developed a well-structured global strategy to seize the opportunities brought by economic globalization and deliver services to customers around the world following their steps of "going global. "

Credit Suisse California Hotel CMBS Marks First Deal in 6 Years

Credit Suisse Group AG sold its first commercial-mortgage bond since 2008 with a $187 million deal tied to two beach-front hotels in Santa Monica, California.

Switzerland’s second-biggest bank is reentering the market as a surge in sales attracts new entrants, sparking concern lenders are loosening standards amid the competition. Credit Suisse’s last deal was an $887 million transaction in March 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, three months before the market for securities tied to properties from skyscrapers to shopping malls shut down for more than a year in the wake of the financial crisis. 

Wall Street banks are poised to issue more than $100 billion of the debt in 2014 after sales doubled to $80 billion last year, Bloomberg data show. Loans contained in deals sold this year are “substantially weaker” than those backing transactions issued in 2013, Barclays Plc analysts said in a report this month. About $8.4 billion in CMBS has been offered since January.

Almost one-quarter of mortgages in 2013 offerings are based on incomes that are at least 10 percent higher than landlords reported during the previous 12 months, Barclays analysts led by Keerthi Raghavan said in the Feb. 7 report. So-called pro-forma underwriting allowed property owners to pile on more debt during the boom years leading up to the property market crash in 2008 on the assumption that future earnings would be higher.
New Department Zurich-based Credit Suisse, which tried to rebuild its origination team in 2011, fired 50 people in October of that year without completing a deal as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis roiled credit markets. The bank restarted the group again last year.

The lender, ranked by newsletter Commercial Mortgage Alert as the fifth most-active underwriter of CMBS globally when issuance peaked in 2007, is taking a cautious approach to new deals by avoiding the types of transactions that require lenders to hold as much as $1 billion of mortgages on their books for months, according to people with knowledge of its strategy.

This week’s transaction is backed by a mortgage linked to the Shutters on the Beach and the Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, California, according to Morningstar Inc. Top-ranked securities maturing in seven years were sold to pay 85 basis points, or 0.85 percentage point, more than the one-month London interbank offered rate, according to a person familiar with the sale who asked not to be identified because terms aren’t public.

The Shutters on the Beach and the Casa Del Mar are the only two beachfront properties in Santa Monica, Morningstar said in a report earlier this month. In 2009, during the depths of the recession, revenue at the properties dropped about 19 percent, compared with a decline of 35 percent for comparable hotels, according to Morningstar.

Hotels are one of the most volatile commercial-property types as changes in the economic climate affect them almost immediately with rates resetting every night. In addition to the $183 million mortgage, the properties are carrying $186 million of mezzanine loans, according to Morningstar.

Fitch: U.S. CMBS New Issue Metrics Worsen; Legacy Metrics Improve

The road continues to diverge between new issue and legacy metrics for U.S. CMBS, according to Fitch Ratings in its latest quarterly index report.

New issue metrics continue to decline as the percentage of new issue full and partial interest-only (IO) loans in Fitch-rated transactions rose by five percentage points last quarter. The increase was driven by an approximately four-percentage-point increase in full IO loans. In addition, Fitch-stressed LTVs continued to edge up, while stressed DSCRs were lower.

Meanwhile, metrics of legacy U.S. CMBS improved. Delinquencies in Fitch-rated transactions fell in fourth quarter-2014 (4Q'14), though the rate of declines slowed. This was largely due to a backlog of REO assets, which comprised nearly two-thirds of the index balance. Furthermore, the percentage of loans in special servicing declined again in 4Q'14 to $25.1 billion.

'The wave of upcoming CMBS maturities will begin in 2015, particularly in the second half of the year,' said Managing Director Mary MacNeill. The majority of 2015 loan maturities for Fitch-rated, fixed-rate multiborrower CMBS ($21 billion) are set to come due in 2H'15. Roughly $12 billion comes due in 1H'15 ($3.5 billion in 1Q'15). The majority of the higher-leveraged, peak-vintage loans mature between 2016 and 2017, which totaled $129 billion at YE14, excluding $11 billion that already defaulted and remain outstanding.