Ireland

Irish fashion retailer A|wear has been sold to a UK group called Hilco, which specialises in distressed restructurings, the Irish Times reported. No financial details were released yesterday although Hilco said it would provide A|wear with “extended working capital facilities to facilitate the business’s financial needs”. A|wear was sold by Brown Thomas in 2007 for a reported €70 million to a consortium comprising UK private equity group Alchemy Partners and management, who took a 20 per cent stake in the business. The deal was backed with debt provided by Ulster Bank.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has lost a bid to withhold $500,000 (€364,000) from his creditors in his US bankruptcy case by failing in a claim that his seaside property in Cape Cod was his main home, the Irish Times reported. A Boston court ruled yesterday that Mr Drumm was not entitled to claim a “homestead exemption” for $500,000 on his multimillion-dollar house at Stage Neck Road in Chatham, Massachusetts.

Credit unions should pay into a new fund to help “stabilise” the sector, in which 27 institutions are in serious need of capital, a Government-appointed group has advised, the Irish Times reported. The Commission on Credit Unions, in its interim report, has also called for enhanced regulation of the movement, as well as a greater emphasis on internal audit and risk management. “The regulatory framework is not as well developed as in most mature credit union movements,” said commission chairman Prof Donal McKillop yesterday.

Anglo Irish Bank and lenders to the Quinn Group have agreed the terms of a deal to lower the debt on the business to €475 million from €760 million. The changes, which will be voted on by creditors, reduce the group’s annual interest bill to €40 million from €60 million. The Quinn Group is the industrial conglomerate formerly owned by Seán Quinn and his family. The fresh restructuring means that Anglo, a 75 per cent shareholder, will have more debt to be paid off before recouping value from the recovery of the group.

As many as 10,000 people could see ownership of their homes transferred to local authorities under a scheme proposed by the Inter-Departmental Working Group on Mortgage Arrears, which published its report this morning, the Irish Times reported. Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the move was one of a number of options which would be considered as part of efforts to cure the debt crisis.

New bankruptcy provisions reducing the period of applying for discharge from bankruptcy from 12 to five years and providing for the automatic discharge of bankruptcy after 12 years have been commenced by the Minister for Justice, the Irish Times reported. Alan Shatter announced that the new measures, contained in the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011, came into force Monday. Other, mainly technical, improvements in bankruptcy law have been in force since the beginning of August.

The National Asset Management Agency, Ireland's state-run "bad bank", has put two loan portfolios worth a total of 800 million euros ($1.1 billion) on the market, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The source told Reuters that NAMA was being advised by property consultancy Savills on the disposal of about 200 million euros of loans that had been made to housing and hotel developer Donal Mulryan. Separately, real estate consultancy CBRE was marketing about 600 million euros worth of loans to property developer Cyril Dennis. NAMA, CBRE and Savills all declined to comment.

The International Monetary Fund has said there was no pressing need for the Government to adopt “dramatic” new austerity measures to deal with the slowdown in the global economy, the Irish Times reported. While warning Ireland’s recovery could come under threat from weakening growth in Europe and beyond, the fund’s European director, Antonio Borges, said the Irish economy was performing surprisingly well and said conditions now were much better than before. Ireland’s performance was exemplary but the situation remained challenging, he said.

The High Court has sanctioned the draw-down of €738 million from the State's insurance compensation fund by the administrators of Quinn Insurance, the Irish Times reported. The ruling is subject to the court approving the sale of the business to US insurer Liberty Mutual tomorrow. The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, gave the administrators permission to draw down €320 million from the fund immediately, once the sale is approved, and to make additional calls of up to €418 million through further applications to the court.

The National Asset Management Agency has sold loans associated with the Claridges, Connaught and Berkeley hotels in London, it was confirmed today, the Irish Times reported. The loans, which funded the acquisition of the hotels in 2005, were given to the Maybourne Hotel Group by two Irish banks. Nama acquired the loans at the end of June 2010 from the banks. The Maybourne Hotel Group was headed by Derek Quinlan, who has become a Nama debtor.