Google buys €99.9m building from NAMA

GOOGLE, the global internet group, has bought Dublin’s tallest office building for €99.9 million from NAMA, the country’s bad bank.

The National Asset Management Agency said yesterday it made a clear profit on the deal.

NAMA said it recovered all the costs involved including amounts paid out to acquire the loan as well as the additional funding required to complete the 15-storey building at the Grand Canal Dock, in Dublin.

Real Estate Opportunities (REO) has agreed the sale of Dublin’s tallest commercial office building.

Talks between Treasury Holdings, which owns 75% of REO, and Google began last year with a view to Google taking a lease on the building.

Subsequently an outright sale was agreed on the property, located near the company’s existing Dublin facility which is also on Barrow Street.

“We are at capacity in our EMEA headquarters in Barrow Street and the additional space will allow us to relocate some teams to Montevetro and to create an even more spacious working environment for Googlers in our existing building,” said John Herlihy, head of Google in Ireland.

“Acquiring Montevetro also means we have the space and flexibility to support our future operations.”

The deal is one of the largest involving a commercial property in Ireland in several years and it said the price was satisfactory given the current depressed state of the commercial property market in Ireland, said Ray Horney, REO’s chairman.

NAMA’s chairman Frank Daly welcomed the deal. “Based on the sale price achieved, all NAMA’s outlay — acquisition price and further investment — has been recovered,” he said.

This was an “excellent example” of the bank’s ability to boost the value of assets under its control.

It will also be seen “as a positive sign for the Irish commercial property market,” he said.

In a separate development NAMA said the agency will repay €250m of Senior Securities [also known as NAMA Bonds] in the coming weeks.

This represents the first repayment of these bonds made by NAMA which has to date issued €28.575 billion of senior securities as consideration to the participating institutions. The payments are ahead of schedule.

Frank Daly, NAMA’s chairman said the fact that this process has begun barely a year after it was approved “demonstrates the effectiveness of the NAMA business model and reflects its current strong cash position; this is a significant milestone for the Agency and for the participating institutions.”

NAMA has also authorised the repayment of €49m to the minister for finance, it said.

This was money advanced to the agency in March 2010 and used to inject ordinary equity into the special purpose vehicle, National Asset Management Agency Investment Limited.