NAMA’s hotel loans net €800m

THE National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has sold the combined loans of three prestigious London hotels previously owned by Irish investors for more than €800 million.

The deal — NAMA’s largest single asset sale to date — technically keeps the agency on course to sell €7.5 billion worth of assets by the end of 2013. To date, the agency has approved asset sales of €4.6bn, although some of these are shared assets with AIB and Ulster Bank and not all have gone through as yet. A NAMA spokesperson said the agency is “well on the way” to reach its sales target.

In a statement, NAMA said that it sold the latest loans — held by Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Berkeley; which were purchased by a consortium of Irish investors, led by Derek Quinlan in 2005 — to Maybourne Finance Ltd — a vehicle owned by the Barclay brothers.

NAMA said it recovered 100% of the original loan value, plus interest; but did not disclose how much of a profit it made on the deal.

Meanwhile, NAMA is actively looking to hire advisers to help sell its US and continental European loan portfolios. Speaking at yesterday’s Corporate Restructuring Summit in Dublin, chief executive Brendan McDonagh said six advisers in Europe and four in the US were likely to be taken on and that “loan sales will form a major part of our strategy going forward, now that we are almost through the debtor business plans and now that we’ve gleaned considerable knowledge about the assets and the debtors.”

Mr McDonagh added that the final discount on the last €17.5bn worth of loans NAMA acquired from banks last year should come in at the original 58% estimate; although due diligence on the loans won’t be completed until the end of this year.

Speaking at the same event, Anglo Irish Bank chairman, Alan Dukes, said that he was becoming “less and less hopeful” about the eurozone debt crisis being solved, adding that there are “perhaps, two weeks left in which to take decisive action on the Greek crisis”.

Elsewhere, Finance Minister Michael Noonan refused to say that he wouldn’t renew the bank guarantee and said that deposit flows into Irish banks increased last month, making the banking system “quite sound” and putting it in a “very good position”.