Tag Archives: Nama

Nama; developer Michael O’Flynn (centre) outside the Four Courts in 2014

The Irish Times reports:

The State’s National Asset Management Agency (Nama) received just £340,000 (€390,760 ) from the O’Flynn group’s sale of two British properties that were later valued at £5.3 million, the Court of Appeal heard.

Companies linked to developer Michael O’Flynn are suing former workers Patrick Cox, Liam Foley, Eoghan Kearney and others, claiming that they earned a €12.5 million profit on a student accommodation project at the property business’s expense.

Mr Cox and the others are challenging the claim on several grounds, including that the companies taking the legal action never employed them.

Nama got just £340,000 from sale of O’Flynn properties, court hears (Barry O’Halloran, The Irish Times)

Rollingnews

Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure & Reform Paschal Donohoe and NAMA Chairman Frank Daly at the launch last April of NAMA’s  Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2018.

Irish Tax Payer writes:

A number of news reports have declared that NAMA is on on track to achieve its overall objectives and is estimated to return a €3.5bn profit to the exchequer.

Ignoring the obvious questions of whether the €3.5bn is really a profit, when it won’t come close to recovering the €74bn nominal value of the loans. Or whether NAMA’s ‘objectives’ actually contributed to the current rental and housing crises we are experiencing.

Instead let’s look at the “return” NAMA is making.

If we take it at face value that it will generate a profit of €3.5bn over its initial €32bn investment, that is an 11% return.

Not bad, right?

Or is it?

Nama was set up in 2009, so that’s only 1.1% return a year. Not great.

How about the private investors that purchased the assets from NAMA, how are they getting on?

Homebuilder Glenveagh Properties PLC, has a gross margin of 18.2%. The company is targeting a 20% margin in 2020.

Cairn Homes the listed housebuilder’s operating profits surged by 267% in 2018.

Profits at Pepper, the loan servicing company, were in excess of €16m for 2018 which was up 186% from €5.6m a year earlier.

And finally figures published by the Government’s show that the dividends paid by the four listed REITs (Green, Hibernia, Yew Grove and Irish Residential Properties I-Res) grew to €93.49 million last year from €9.95 million in 2015, a TENFOLD increase in four years.

Doesn’t look so impressive now?

Fight!

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

Property developer Garrett Kelleher (right) at the launch of the Chicago Spire development unveiled by Liam Neeson and his wife Natasha Richardson in Dublin on January 23, 2008.

Last month in Chicago, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that Mr Kelleher filed against the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which took over debt on the aborted 150-storey skyscraper in 2010, seeking $1.2 billion. Mr Kelleher intends to appeal.

Via economist Constantin Gurdiev:

Rollingnews

Former Player Wills tobacco factory on the South Circular Road, Dublin 8

A petition has been posted on Uplift, calling for affordable homes and “appropriate community facilities” to be built at the former Player Wills tobacco factory on the South Circular Road in Dublin 8.

The petition, posted by Rebecca Moynihan, says:

For over a decade now the Player Wills’ site on the South Circular Road has laid vacant. The site has been passed into the hands of NAMA with Grant Thornton appointed as receivers.

This site has the potential to have develop over 500 affordable homes with appropriate community facilities, in order to develop a sustainable community for decades to come.

The Minister for Housing should intervene to stop this land being transferred to a private equity firm and develop the site as cost rental and affordable housing to ensure that the housing needs of our citizens is met.

The petition can be read in full here

Anyone?

Related: Player Wills site’s original developer may take it back from Nama (The Irish Times, November 10, 2018)

Pic: Builtdublin.com



Saturday.

Sandyford, Dublin 18 (opposite Stillorgan Luas station)

Activists from Dundrum Housing Action Group drill a ‘Not For Sale sign at a site listed for residential housing development during a 24 hr protest.

The site, with planning permission for 459 apartments opposite Stillorgan Luas stop, is owned by NAMA and the group want it used for social housing.

Dundrum Housing Action Group

Previously: Sandyford site for 459 apartments guiding €36m (irish Times, October 31)

 Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie, third pic via Dundrum Housing Action Group

Independent TD Mick Wallace in the Dáil last week on vulture funds and real estate investment trusts (REITs)

Mick tweetz:

Vulture Funds have caused untold damage in Ireland, but they couldn’t have done so without the 100% support of the Fine Gael/Labour & FG/Ind Alliance Governments, not to mention their beautiful relationship with our friends in NAMA…

Thanks Gemma

The Department of Housing confirmed to The Sunday Business Post that a number of homes which were sold by Nama to Cerberus in recent years are part of a portfolio of properties under offer by the Housing Agency.

The homes are contained in a portfolio of almost 200 homes currently under negotiation between the Housing Agency and Cerberus, code-named Project CB by the state authority.

The Department of Housing confirmed that 26 of the homes in the portfolio were previously controlled by Nama.

“The vast majority of properties being progressed in the current transaction are not related to state institutions or state-financed institutions. A small number of properties have loan charges that were acquired from Nama by Cerberus,” a spokesman for the agency said.

State pays market price to buy back properties sold at discount to vulture funds (Jack Horgan-Jones, Sunday Business Post)

Frank Connolly

Yesterday.

In the Sunday Business Post.

It was reported that a book by investigative journalist Frank Connolly, called Nama-land, will be published by Gill & Macmillan in October.

Tom Lyons reported:

A book to be published in October is expected to contain significant revelations concerning the operations of Nama and the manner in which its disposal of public assets has transformed property ownership and created a new elite in Ireland.

Written by investigative journalist Frank Connolly, Nama-land details events from the establishment of the ‘bad bank’ in 2009 and its management and subsequent sale of huge property portfolios, mainly to US vulture funds over recent years. It examines how the process has enriched international investors and their local agents against the background of a deepening housing and mortgage crisis.

It also looks at the role of key players in politics and business, North and South, including in the controversial sale by Nama of its Northern Ireland portfolio, Project Eagle, to US fund Cerberus in 2014.

“I hope it will get behind what has been something of a veil of secrecy surrounding the operations of Nama and the largest disposal of public assets in the history of the state. It is based on research, facts and investigative journalism and will be published in October,” Connolly said.

Book to lift lid on Nama’s operations and their fallout (The Sunday Business Post)

Rollingnews

Screen Shot 2017-02-20 at 10.26.01

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan

Yesterday.

In the Sunday Business Post.

Further to the newspaper’s report last week that the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, the Department of Finance and Nama have been heavily criticised in a draft report by the Public Accounts Committee – in relation to Nama’s sale of its Northern Ireland loan book, known as Project Eagle…

And that, specifically, it was “not appropriate” for Noonan or Nama to meet with Cerberus the day before the Project Eagle bid closing date…

Jack Horgan-Jones and Hugh O’Connell reported:

Noonan has rebutted the finding, contained in the committee’s draft working paper and published by this newspaper last week, that it was “not appropriate” for him to meet with the US fund prior to its €1.6 billion purchase of Nama’s Northern portfolio. The draft said this could be perceived as “special treatment”.

…In a letter to the committee last week, Noonan expressed “great concern” over the draft findings, saying they were “extremely damaging” to him. He maintains that the meetings were not inappropriate and that he was never given a right of reply.

But committee members are doubling down this weekend. “Everybody agrees the fact that he met them is a problem. Everybody understands. Nobody can say it was a good idea to meet Cerberus on the day of the bids,” a PAC source said.

“The point of that whole meeting, the potential impression that meeting gave, will remain in [the report] . . . The essence of that meeting happening at that time and the impression of that meeting and having such access at that critical time will be in the final report.”

Another committee source said that while the language around the finding may change, it is extremely unlikely to be removed altogether.

Fine Gael TDs on the committee have indicated they will attempt to block any report which states that Noonan did not act appropriately.

PAC stands firm over criticism of Noonan-Cerberus meeting (Jack Horgan-Jones, Hugh O’Connell, The Sunday Business Post)

Rollingnews