Central Bank to buy Anglo HQ shell from NAMA

This is a short blogpost in response to what has been a large volume of private messages sent in via this blog’s contact form asking why there isn’t blogpost on the sale of the Anglo HQ shell on North Wall Quay in Dublin – the property developed by Liam Carroll but which is now in NAMA – and which Bloomberg reported today was being sold to the Central Bank of Ireland.

The reason there is no new blogpost here today, on the subject is because there was a blogpost here on 24th March 2012 which exclusively reported the sale, and you’ll see there has already been discussion about the wisdom of the sale and competing uses and bids. It’s old news!

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

NAMA update – €8bn in approved sales with 90% outside Ireland

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the umbrella state agency which includes NAMA amongst its operations has today produced the April 2012 monthly version of its so-called “Investor Road-show” which is used to attract and retain investment in Ireland, which will be particularly relevant if we do get back into the bond markets next year, though it should be remembered that the NTMA has said that it expects to start selling substantial amounts of short-term debt during Summer 2012.

Of particular interest on here is what the NTMA has to say about NAMA and there are a few snippets of note:

 

(1) NAMA now has nearly 210 employees, that’s up from 40-50 from when NAMA was first conceived and 100 at the end of 2010. Remember NAMA also pays for 400-500 staff at IBRC, AIB and Bank of Ireland to manage NAMA loans, and NAMA also employs a veritable army of third party suppliers of professional services.

(2) NAMA was sitting on a cash mountain of €4.6bn on 31st March, 2012 which will have become a relative €1.5bn molehill on 2nd April 2012 when its coffers were raided to the tune of €3.06bn by Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan who was “deferring” the payment of Anglo’s promissory note by using NAMA’s cash to redeem it, pending Bank of Ireland’s buying a Government bond. No seriously, that’s what happened. The hope is that Bank of Ireland will buy the bond by the end of June 2012 and that the Government can give NAMA its €3.06bn back, with interest.

(3) To the end of March 2012. NAMA has approved €8bn of disposals with 90% outside Ireland(and understood to be mostly in the UK and London in particular). Remember that to the end of September 2011, NAMA had booked a cumulative total of €2.7bn of disposals on which the Agency had booked a disappointing total of €132m in profit – “disappointing” because these disposals were supposed to be of better quality assets in liquid markets.

(4) It is amazing that over two weeks after NAMA handed over the management accounts for 2011 which will have contained the 2011 impairment charge estimate, the NTMA is still unable to provide the impairment estimate though it has no qualms in claiming the NAMA operating profit in 2011 is “forecasted to exceed €700m”.

(5) NAMA has “made decisions” on 97% of its loans, or €72bn of the €74bn in money terms.

(8) NAMA has made 8,000 individual credit decisions; which is considerably up on the cumulative total of 6,000 on 6th February 2012 and 7,000 claimed at the Oireachtas hearing on 14th March 2012.

Read Full Post »