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Some of the senior bondholders of the Opera Finance CMBS have set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate potential solutions as Uni-Invest, the owner of the Dutch office portfolio underpinning the EUR 750 mln facility, was unable to meet the bond maturity deadline this week.

Uni-Invest said in a statement that establishment of the committee meant no decision on whether to extend or redeem the bonds had to be taken by the February 15 deadline. 'We have been given the time and space to continue our strategy of portfolio optimisation and transformation,’ Uni-Invest CEO Pieter Roozenboom said. 'Importantly, nothing changes for our tenants on 15 February.'

The company said it expected the parties would come to a decision in the coming months regarding any extension or redemption of the bonds.

Uni-Invest owns a portfolio of 207 offices across the Netherlands valued at EUR 865 mln.

Eurohypo provided a loan for the assets back in 2005 and put it in a CMBS facility called Opera Finance, which had an initial volume of over EUR 1 bn.

Uni-Invest ran into trouble after being forced to cancel an Initial Public Offering on Euronext in 2007, due to 'adverse market conditions'. The IPO was designed to raise EUR 373 mln, which would have been used to repay part of the loan. Founded in 1924 Uni-Invest was listed in Amsterdam until 2003, a year after it was acquired by a consortium led by Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners.

The German lender entered talks with the bondholders after Uni-Invest defaulted on a senior loan balance target in February 2011. Uni-Invest's EUR 752 mln debt load was subsequently extended to mid-February this year.

Last summer Eurohypo warned it would consider 'all available options' after the refinancing talks failed 'due to a lack of consensus'. Options under consideration included the disposal of Uni-Invest, either consensually or via a loan enforcement process.