Last year there was an entry on here which exhorted NAMA to look well beyondIreland for potential buyers for distressed loans and the underlying property; to borrow a line from Christy Moore’s Lisdoonvarna, it was time to engage with the “Arab sheikhs, Hindu Sikhs, Jesus freaks”
This morning former Sunday Tribune business editor, Neil Callanan eked just a little more from the interview with the NAMA CEO and chairman last week and reveals in today’s Financial Times that NAMA has had contact from Middle Eastern investors expressing interest in Irish hotels with an aim to converting them into private homes and converting surrounding land into stud farms. Neil claims that “Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum [of Dubai], owns seven stud farms in the country. Sheikh Mohammed’s brother, Hamdan, has one and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khalid Abdullah has two” NAMA exercises control over more than 80 hotels in Ireland and the hotel sector is generally seen to be suffering from overcapacity, so some of these hotels may indeed find themselves converted to stud farms in the future.
But it may be NAMA’s more valuable assets that attract significant Middle Eastern funding. In today’s London Evening Standard, Mira Bar-Hillel claims that the Qatari royal family’s investment vehicle, Qatari Diar is in talks with Treasury Holdings over taking an interest in the Battersea Power Station development. It is in fact a Treasury vehicle, Real Estates Opportunities PLC that owns the 38-acre site which finally received planning approval in February, 2011.
The Qataris have been active in theLondonmarket in recent years and now control Harrods, the former Chelsea Barracks (just across the river from Battersea) and One Hyde Park (just across the road from Harrods) where 20,000 sq ft apartments were on offer at GBP £100m. Of course the fact that oil has hovered over the USD $100 per barrel price since the start of this year will no doubt have swelled the coffers of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and European property investment might be seen as an attractive proposition at present.
So that’s the Arab sheikhs. As for the Hindu Sikhs (Christy Moore seemed to mix together two major Indian religions) I wonder how our new Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadker got on, during his St Patrick’s Day junket to India, home of his father. Might we see some hitherto absent investment from the world’s biggest democracy?
NAMA Wine Lake 
I understand the Irish bloodstock industry is under pressure and there are many stud farms for sale. Why would the Arab Soverign funds not just buy the stud farms?. It`s curious their interest in Hotels. I suppose Neil knows best? Perhaps they might consider the ghost estates?
Certainly horses are coming up in the world ,if they are being stabled in luxury hotels.
John Gormley may have been correct when he mentoned the lunatics are taking over the asylum.
Neil Callanan has a way with words.
Meaning what John?
So now we are to have sheikhs living in the crap hotels that were built under Section 23? What genius came up with that notion? You would have to buy a few of the hotels, knock them down, join them together and you still wouldn’t have anything fitting for a sheikh. Where would they bring their wives to shop? Moat of the shops are closed. As for the Qatari royal family’s interest in Battersea ,that is just spin from Treasury Holdings, they release little stories from time to time to try to let on that anyone is interested in that dead duck. Did we not hear that they bid against a sheikh to buy it ? Even the sheikhs don’t throw their money around like Johhny and Richard.
Sorry, I should have said OUR MONEY