Adviser: Nama should be partially sold

One of the original minds behind Nama has said the body should be partially sold as it is not achieving its potential and faces “a major challenge” in recovering its outlay on loan assets.

Peter Bacon — who drew up a blueprint for the agency in 2009 and was appointed an adviser to it the following year — yesterday suggested the partial privatisation of Nama as a way of improving its returns to the taxpayer.

Selling a stake to a private equity investor or listing it on an international stock exchange could, he said, help, as Nama currently “lacks the potential that capital market sophistication could bring to bear”.

Mr Bacon said: “A better return for the taxpayer might be secured by the Government part-privatising Nama, now, to an international private equity investor or international property investment company, or a consortium of such interests.

“At a minimum, the Government should undertake a review of the business strategy of Nama — including the statutory basis on which it is based — to determine if it offers the best prospect of securing the best return to the taxpayer, in the longer-term.”

Such a review, however, would follow the recent establishment of the Nama Advisory Group, being chaired by former HSBC boss, Michael Geoghegan — who has also raised the prospect of a Nama sell-off in the past.

Mr Bacon made his comments at the launch of a report he was commissioned to produce by Treasury Holdings, aimed at looking at potential solutions to Ireland’s economic drought.

Nama — which has claimed to be co-operating well with two-thirds of its debtors and ultimately expects to break even on its loan purchases, at least — didn’t comment, at length, on yesterday’s report, other than to note the involvement of Treasury Holdings — with which the agency is currently engaged in litigation.

Away from Nama, Mr Bacon suggested the establishment of a new State investment bank to provide venture capital for businesses and a new national mortgage bank to stimulate the housing market by offering competitive mortgages.

Such an entity, he said, could be operational within a year, offering 10,000 mortgages per annum and lending to a value of €9.5bn within its first five years.

Funding such a bank could, Mr Bacon said, be a way of a joint initiative between the exchequer and private sector partners.