Ireland

Finance Minister Michael Noonan will hold a series of talks in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday about renegotiating bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund, Independent.ie reported. Mr Noonan has said taxpayers could save up to €375m per year if the State was able to pay-off a share of the IMF portion of the €67.5bn bailout. Any deal needs support from several quarters in Brussels but would give the Finance Minister plenty of scope to cut taxes in next month's Budget.

IBRC’s special liquidators are gearing up to sell off loans owed by past and current staff of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide with a face value of €30 million, the Irish Times reported. The sale is expected to attract interest from private equity buyers prepared to take on a mixture of loans, ranging from home mortgages taken out by Irish Nationwide staff to loans taken out by former Anglo bankers to exercise share options.

Sean Dunne’s two biggest creditors and the US court official investigating his financial affairs have objected to the insolvent property developer’s application to withdraw his US bankruptcy case, the Irish Times reported. At a hearing in a Connecticut court, a lawyer for Mr Dunne’s bankruptcy trustee Richard Coan said he would be seeking to block the developer’s request to end his bid to walk away from $942 million (€700 million) in debts through a discharge from bankruptcy in the US.

A judgment that may have significant ramifications for the Revenue Commissioners in future company liquidations has been handed down in the High Court by Mr Justice Dan Herbert, the Irish Times reported. The Revenue had asked the court for an order setting aside decisions of the chairperson at a creditors’ meeting of a Tullamore, Co Offaly laundry, Ladaney Limited, in voluntary liquidation, not to exclude invalid proxies of non-connected creditors.

Two companies linked to the Carl Scarpa chain of 19 women’s shoe shops, which successfully exited examinership in January, retained combined profits of €515,000 in the year to the end of that month, according to their accounts, the Irish Times reported. Cs Calzature and Carl Scarpa (Grafton Street), received debt write-offs totalling more than €2.4 million arising from the examinership, according to notes in the financial statements. A further note attached to the accounts for the Grafton Street company says it was “engaged in litigation with the landlord” of the store.

Bust developer Sean Dunne is seeking to withdraw his application for bankruptcy protection in the US, Independent.ie reported. The dramatic and unexpected development came as the businessman claimed he no longer had the resources to fight efforts by NAMA to stop him emerging from the process debt free. Last year Dunne filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut, where he has lived since 2010, as creditors owed a total of €695m began to circle. However, Ulster Bank later moved to make Dunne bankrupt in Ireland and an unprecedented dual bankruptcy process has been taking place ever since.

Irish SMEs that borrowed money to invest in property are almost twice as likely to default as similar-sized businesses without property debt, according to new research from the Central Bank. In its report, the bank calculates that 20 per cent of SMEs in the Republic have an exposure of some kind or other to property, the Irish Times reported. These borrowings, many of which stem from loans taken out during the height of the property boom, account for one third of the outstanding bank borrowings of the SME sector.

Europe’s banks have done the heavy-lifting in the toughest ever test of their financial strength, but an intensive quality assurance process and decisions still to be taken by supervisors means they cannot work out how they have fared, the Irish Times reported.

Cork brothers Michael and John O’Flynn have succeeded in removing the interim examiner appointed to four key companies in their construction group and have been put back in charge of their business by the High Court, the Irish Times reported. Ms Justice Mary Irvine today blocked Blackstone subsidiary Carbon Finance from enforcing personal or corporate loans demands. The judge also stood down four Receivers appointed to the O’Flynn companies, revoking their appointment over certain assets and entities within the O’Flynn Construction Group.

Michael O’Flynn has today written to Carbon Finance Ltd, a subsidiary of Blackstone, to inform the American multibillion investment fund that he can repay it his personal loans, the Irish Times reported. In a statement the Cork developer said he had informed Blackstone that he had “funds available” not only to “immediately repay” a loan of €16.7 million it had demanded from him but also to repay in full all of his personal borrowings which total €24.9 million. Mr O’Flynn declined to comment on the source of this funding.