More than 30 bids have been received for the multi-billion Euro sell off of property loans issued by the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank.
The Anglo Irish interest in the Whitgift Centre is also for sale
The two commercial property loan portfolios — dubbed Project Rock and Project Salt — have attracted global interest including bids from leading US funds which specialise in buying so-called distressed debt. Other offers on the table when the first-round deadline passed [5 December] were from Germany, China and Russia. All bidders will remain anonymous.
At the time of the Anglo Irish Bank’s liquidation, it is now called the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, borrowers including Arnotts, Topaz and TV3 were advised their loans would be put up for sale.
Project Rock has been independently valued €7.8bn or just over £6.5bn. A little over €2bn (£1.67bn) worth of these loans — mostly commercial property within the UK — are up to date and are expected to be refinanced by the borrower. The remaining loans of €5.5bn (£4.6bn) are in arrears.
Project Salt, meanwhile, is made up mostly of loans that were given out in the UK by two Anglo subsidiaries — IBRC Property Lending Limited and IBRC Asset Finance — and which are not part of the IBRC liquidation proceedings. Crucially, Salt is not subject to restrictions on what kind of discount the special liquidators can sell at and consists mainly of Irish property loans, with close to €2bn of that lending now in arrears.
Some interested parties have complained about restrictions placed on the sell-off. All the loans were valued by KPMG when the liquidation process began, and Irish finance minister Michael Noonan has barred the Project Rock portfolio and three others from being sold at a discount sparking concern that the market loan books may be too tight, with potential investors warning about the “rigid” nature of the sale process.
The special liquidators, KPMG’s Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson, have always maintained they were “not unhappy” with the scale of interest.
Projects Rock and Salt are part of a wider sell off of the former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society’s remaining property loans. Project Evergreen, Project Sand and Project Stone will all eventually go under the hammer as well as loans valued at more than €22bn (£18.4bn).
The sell-off deadline came just days after news that a London shopping centre, in which 132 customers of the Anglo Irish Bank invested, is to be redeveloped as part of a £1bn investment scheme. Anglo Irish Bank Assurance acquired its stake in the leasehold in Croydon’s Whitgift Shopping Centre in 2005 as part of a £225m loan deal.
Special liquidator Kieran Wallace is in the process of selling off the bank’s interest in the retail site although it’s not clear if he is doing a deal to sell this interest on its own or if he intends to include it in the sale of the IBRC Wealth Management portfolio.
Last month The Croydon Partnership, a new joint venture company, won outline planning approval for the redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre as part of a two-million square foot Westfield Mall complex.
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