Vultures ‘buying restructured loans’

Regulated banks may have sold large amounts of soured mortgages last year to unregulated loan owners — the so-called vulture funds — but only after the loans were restructured, a leading debt expert has said.

Paul Joyce, senior policy analyst at the Free Legal Advice Centres, Flac, said that the latest Central Bank mortgage arrears figures suggest the vulture funds unexpectedly acquired large amounts of good quality loans because the mainstream banks who were selling the loans struck restructuring deals with their distressed customers before the sales. The Central Bank figures show that the number of loans held by vulture funds more than doubled to almost 25,470 at the end of December from September and they now control over €4.1bn in mortgages in the Republic.