Ireland

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) plans to sell two portfolios of property loans with a face value of €6 billion as it winds down its stock of risky commercial property debt, according to sources, the Irish Times reported. The loans will be split into two groups of €3 billion each and will be sold at a discount, said the sources. A spokesman for Nama declined to comment. The Government set up Nama in 2009 to take over €74 billion of commercial property loans held by Irish banks and sell them over as many as 10 years.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm is in a bigger fight to stop his extradition to Ireland to face criminal charges, but he has just lost a smaller one: his bid to walk away from his debts. Eleven months after a US bankruptcy judge denied him a discharge from bankruptcy because he lied and fraudulently and knowingly failed to disclose €680,000 in cash transfers to his wife Lorraine, the 49-year-old Dubliner has lost his appeal against that withering ruling.

A meeting of creditors of Sir Anthony O’Reilly to see if a formal deal can be reached on the sale of his assets and the division of the proceeds is likely to follow Friday’s decision of the court in the Bahamas to declare him bankrupt. The judge in the case specifically mentioned that parties in the case could subsequently apply to the court to ratify such an agreement, the Irish Times reported.

AIB shareholders are to vote on the bank’s new capital re-organisation, which will see the value of their shareholding in the bank almost wiped out, at an egm on December 16th, the Irish Times reported. The bank announced its plans for an egm on Monday morning, as the first step in its plan to return to the markets next year and allow the Government to divest some of its 99.8 per cent stake in the bank.

AIB raised €750 million in a bond issue on Thursday as part of its plan to start repaying the bailout it received from the State, enjoying strong demand that bodes well for a planned stock market flotation next year, the Irish Times reported. The Government has pumped €21 billion into AIB since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, the biggest bailout given to any Irish bank still trading, and will recoup an initial €1.6 billion under its capital reorganisation.

Gayle Killilea, the wife of property developer Seán Dunne, has objected to an application in the US courts for relief that would help her husband’s Irish bankruptcy official recover assets from the couple, the Irish Times reported. In the latest development in long-running legal actions bridging bankruptcies in two countries and litigation in a third, Ms Killilea has asked a US court not to terminate the “automatic stay” that protects debtors from actions taken by creditors to recover their debts.

Allied Irish Banks is on the brink of issuing its first subordinated bond since being nationalised after the financial crisis, reaching a key milestone in its recovery. The euro Tier 2 bond will be the bank's first attempt at a public subordinated offering since it imposed severe losses on subordinated debt investors during the height of the eurozone financial crisis. The bank was bailed out in 2009 and fully nationalised in 2010. "It really is an important trade for them," said Chris Agathangelou, head of EMEA FIG syndicate at Nomura. "If it goes well, it sets up their whole capital plan.

In recent years, other European countries have accused Ireland of acting like an unfair low-tax haven. The European Commission, for example, is investigating whether Ireland gave Apple a preferential tax deal that broke the region’s tough state-aid rules, the International New York Times reported. While lawmakers and the company have repeatedly denied wrongdoing, the country is already phasing out the most controversial loopholes. Ireland has since turned to a new inducement: a low tax rate on revenue generated from patents and other intellectual property held in Ireland.

Davy, Ireland’s largest securities firm, is poised to hand employees about €40 million as it repays loans linked to its 2006 management-led buyout, according to people with knowledge of the matter, the Irish Times reported. The repayment is 1.8 times what workers lent the company to help finance its leveraged buyout from Bank of Ireland, including interest, which accrued at 6 per cent a year, said the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is private. The business was valued at €350 million in the buyout.

The European Central Bank (ECB) pushed for a quick fire sale of Irish bank assets as Ireland entered the bail-out programme in late 2010, putting the protection of its own balance sheet ahead of the interest of Irish taxpayers, former IMF deputy director Ajai Chopra has said. Mr Chopra, who was one of the senior IMF officials responsible for the design and monitoring of the bailout programme, wrote in a report for the European Parliament that the ECB’s advice on fiscal policy and structural reforms - which he said were outside its mandate - were wrong for Ireland.