News on Friday last that Bank of Scotland (Ireland) has had receivers appointed to various assets of county Down developer, MAR Properties and five of its subsidiaries. The BBC reports that there are nine properties affected which are shop units on Bangor’s Main Street – presently for sale through Osborne King here – the Mountpottinger YMCA building in Belfast, houses and development sites in Kircubbin, Groomsport, Bangor, Ballywalter and Carrickfergus.
The MAR group was founded in 1997 by Noel Murphy (“M”), Adam Armstrong (“A”) and William Rush (“R”). The group developed residential and commercial property in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. In January 2013, it sold the Cultra Railway Station in county Down. Some of its loans are in NAMA, and loans to MAR are understood to be one of NAMA’s largest exposures in Northern Ireland and no doubt NAMA will study the latest developments carefully.
NAMA has acquired GBP 3bn (€3.5bn) of loans from Northern Ireland by reference to original par values and paid GBP 1.26bn (€1.5bn), and to date, it has advanced €125m to Northern Irish developers for the development of projects, though some of this money has been spent in the mainland UK.
It will be interesting to see what Nama does next – the agency has previously said that much of its enforcement action in the north has been ‘defensive’ ie. its hand has been forced by another secured lender. For example it looks like Nama only took out Seamus McCloy’s Carn Developments after Ulster Bank appointed receivers to a site in Roscommon.
MAR have been selling away at GB stuff : a London office block and a Glasgow retail development have been off-loaded in what I assume to be Nama-directed sales. They also own the building in Belfast which was Anglo’s Belfast HQ.
Wouldnt of helped Carn Developments that they has a basket case site in letterkenny that had a Zero chance of being Developed
Letterkenny (‘the fastest growing town in western Europe’) has turned out to be a graveyard for plenty of northerners.
That it has.Boys who thought they could make a quick buck and got caught.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21788213
Further update
Did we ever get access to Gannon Homes and Ballymore Group Accounts? Do not seem to be updated on here yet