Today’s Sunday Independent carries a claim that NAMA is finalising the sale of Penneys’ flagship store on Parnell Street in north central Dublin. The building, Chapel House at 21-26 Parnell Street, is reportedly owned by a Liam Carroll company and its upper floors are home to many of the companies in the Liam Carroll group including Zoe, Danninger, Dunloe Ewart, North Quay Investments and a web of other companies often used for single projects. Liam Carroll of course is a NAMA Top 10 developer whose NAMA loans, estimated at €1.7bn, were transferred in Tranche 1 last March-May 2010. Other current occupants of the building are Cybertrust, Norkom Technologies and Halifax, the Royal Bank of Scotland unit which quit the Irish market last year but is still managing residual business. And of course Penneys which the Independent claims is the buyer.
The price paid for the building by Penneys is reportedly €25m (€227 psf or in the new money €2426 psm). According to the estate agent blurb “Chapel House is a dramatic six storey office block totaling approximately 10,313 sq m (111,010 sq ft) of net lettable area. The building design offers companies the opportunity to occupy some of the largest single office floor plates in Dublin, while still offering flexibility for sub-division.”
In late 2009, CBRE was offering 2,136 m2 (22, 992 sq ft) of office space in the building at an annual rent of €302 m2 (€28 psf) and car parking spaces at €3,200.
Separately, on Friday last, Google confirmed that it had acquired the Gordon House & Gasworks complex on Barrow Street. The complex is understood to be owned by another Liam Carroll company. The Sunday Business Post reported last week that it was thought that NAMA was involved in that sale but if that is so, it may only have been peripheral involvement as it is understood that the loans covering the two buildings were advanced by Bank of Scotland Ireland which of course is not a NAMA Participating Institution (PI – AIB, Anglo, Bank of Ireland, EBS and INBS).
There is a suggestion in the Independent that unspecified changes to accounting rules make outright purchase a preferable option at present and that this may be behind the recent Google acquisitions and this claimed sale. I’m not so sure.
UPDATE: 21st May, 2011. The Independent today confirms the sale. The new information is that Chapel House is set to become the international headquarters for the Penneys/Primark business and the sale was handled by the receiver Ken Fennell of Kavanagh Fennell.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Are these sales transparent, were they advertised ? Isn’t there somewhere in The Irish Statute Book on how NAMA (State body) can sell assets ? … apparently it has to be transparent and more or less at auction for highest price unless in exceptional circumstances ie. a Charity
@yziat, when NAMA sells a loan it must comply with its code of practice for the Disposal of Bank Assets (available here – http://www.nama.ie/Publications/2010/CodesofPracticeDisposalofBankAssets.pdf). When NAMA sells real property (as opposed to loans) it says that it complies with the 2009 Code of Practice for the Governance of State Agencies (available here http://www.onegov.ie/eng/Publications/New_Code_of_Practise_for_State_Agencies.pdf)
In answer to your question, NAMA must indeed be transparent when it has taken possession of a property and sells it. Auctions, that type of thing.
However there is a gap in the NAMA legislation. Before NAMA take possession of a property through foreclosure it may oversee the sale of the property by the developer but it is the developer that makes the sale and in that case, it is not clear what standards are followed.
Confirmed in Insolvency Journal today
Well done Neil for breaking the story.