Nama sells €5.4bn Northern loans

Nama has sold its Northern Ireland portfolio with a par value of £4.5bn (€5.45bn) to a US private equity firm for an undisclosed price.

The assets, known as the Project Eagle portfolio of loans, were sold to US-based Cerberus Capital for more than the £1.3bn that Nama originally paid. The sale is the largest single transaction by Nama.

The portfolio consisted of loans relating to about 850 properties across the province. The move was welcomed by Peter Robinson, the North’s first minister.

Michael Noonan, the finance minister, also welcomed the sale. “[The] announcement by Nama of the sale of their Northern Ireland loan book to Cerberus is very good news for the Irish taxpayer, Nama, and the Northern Irish economy.

“This is the biggest loan sale that Nama have completed to date and highlights the progress the agency is making in generating a return on its assets for the Irish taxpayer.

“As I have said on many occasions, a strong and growing economy in Northern Ireland is in all our best interests. I am confident that the purchaser, Cerberus, will work closely with the Northern Ireland Executive, invest in the Northern Ireland economy, and support economic growth and job creation.”

Nama, which was set up in 2009, paid the domestic banks €32bn in senior bonds for roughly €72bn of property loans. In an interview with this newspaper in January, the agency’s chief executive, Brendan McDonagh, said it would ramp up its sale of assets over the course of this year to take advantage of improving property market conditions.

Nama is now on course to complete the sale of its entire portfolio before the original timeframe of 2020, he added.

Meanwhile, the news agency Bloomberg is reporting that Nama has agreed to buy Royal Bank of Scotland’s and KBC’s loans to Dundrum shopping centre, giving it full control over the debts linked to the complex, people familiar with the matter said.

Nama’s purchase of RBS unit Ulster Bank and KBC’s combined 30% stake of a syndicated loan to the Dundrum Town Centre, a 150,000 sq m shopping outlet in south Dublin, gives it full control of the debt, said the people, who asked not to be identified, as the talks are private.

The agency, which owns the rest of the shopping centre’s debt, is paying par value for the loans, one of the people said, declining to give a figure for the loans.

Nama’s move may pave the way for the sale of the shopping centre, valued at as much as €1bn, to help repay the project’s developer Castlethorn Construction’s loans to the agency, the people said.

Officials from Nama, RBS, and KBC declined to comment.