Government decides main EBS offer ‘not sufficient’

THE EBS Building Society has been taken off the market, with the Department of Finance deciding that the main offer on the table for the lender wasn’t sufficient.

In a brief statement, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) said that the sale process had been terminated “following the decision by the Minister for Finance not to pursue any further the proposal to acquire EBS by a consortium of investors led by Cardinal Capital Group”.

The consortium — comprising Dublin-based investment group, Cardinal Capital and US-based asset management and private equity groups Carlyle and WL Ross — had seemingly pipped Irish Life & Permanent &in the race to acquire EBS in recent weeks and was offering to inject more than €600m into the company, as well as committing to what it called “an extensive and expertly constructed multi-billion euro funding and restructuring programme, to strengthen the long-term funding base of the EBS.”