Ireland

A High Court judge has said he would approve a debt write-off of about €3 million for musical director Frank McNamara and his wife Theresa Lowe, the former RTÉ presenter, The Irish Times reported. However Mr Justice Denis McDonald has sought further clarification first around the true value of Mr McNamara’s inheritance of his parents’ home and rental income on the property, which will go towards repaying some of the couple’s debts, before he signs off on their proposed personal insolvency arrangements.

The Government has seen almost €6 billion wiped off the value of its stakes in the three surviving bailed-out banks in the past year, leaving a notional shortfall in its aim to recoup their rescue costs during the financial crisis, The Irish Times reported.

Green Reit, Ireland’s first real estate investment trust, is to be sold to London-based property investment group Henderson Park in a €1.34bn deal that underlines the slowdown in the country’s commercial property market after a period of strong growth, the Financial Times reported. Green was floated six years ago as a recovery began in the Irish property market, which had been knocked by the financial crash of 2008.

Sports Direct has won the bidding war for Jack Wills, adding yet another brand to Mike Ashley’s high street empire, The Irish Times reported. Advisers at KPMG said Jack Wills had been put into administration on Monday and was immediately sold to Sports Direct in a process known as a pre-pack administration. The retailer has a small number of stores in the Republic, including on Grafton Street, at the Dundrum Town Centre and at Kildare Village.

Harland and Wolff, the historic Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, is racing to find a buyer to avoid collapsing into administration as workers called on Boris Johnson to intervene to avert its closure, the Financial Times reported. Workers locked themselves inside the gates and warned they would not leave until a resolution is found to enable the 158-year-old yard to remain open. The collapse of one of Britain’s oldest shipyards would be likely to raise questions about the government’s national shipbuilding strategy.

Allied Irish Banks reported lower first-half profits on Friday as costs rose and exceptional charges slowed its recovery a decade after Ireland’s banking crash. Profit before tax was 436 million euros ( £390.46 million ), including exceptional items of 131 million euro, Reuters reported. That compared with 762 million in the same period last year. Chief Financial Officer Donal Galvin told Reuters two exceptional items affected performance in the first half, namely a 35 million euro provision for a tracker mortgage fine and a provision related to a loan documentation issue.

Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Finance, will allow the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) to extend its work to 2025. The Department of Finance has published a review of Nama, the agency set up to take over Irish banks’ property debts following the financial crash, to assess how the organisation is progressing towards achieving its objectives, The Irish Times reported. Nama was due to be wound up in 2021, after it had finished getting a return for the State from the loans.

Permanent TSB (PTSB) must shift a further €550 million in problem loans before it will meet its own targets – and get a hearing from regulators on lifting a ban on paying dividends, The Irish Times reported. The bank disclosed in its interim results, published on Thursday, that it has €1.7 billion of NPLs on its balance sheet, equivalent to 10 per cent of its loan book, having reduced the ratio from an eye-watering 28 per cent at the start of 2018. Last year, it sold €3.4 billion in non-performing mortgages in the face of considerable political opposition.

Legal combat in Sean Dunne’s US bankruptcy case appears set to resume after more than 10 hours of mediation last week failed to produce a settlement, The Irish Times reported. “We mediated the case over a day and half,” said Thomas Curran, a lawyer for the plaintiff, the trustee in Mr Dunne’s American bankruptcy. “The case did not settle.” Mr Curran said the moratorium on most filings imposed by US district judge Jeffrey Meyer during the mediation is set to expire, and he expects the two sides to resume briefing on various issues.

The extended grounding of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max plane forced Ryanair Holdings Plc to scale back growth plans for next summer, putting the airline industry on notice that the crisis is starting to affect longer-term plans, Bloomberg News reported. With a return date for the Max still uncertain after two fatal crashes, Ryanair is likely to receive barely half of the 58 planes it was expecting for the 2020 peak schedule, the Irish company said Tuesday, estimating that the reduction will wipe 5 million passengers from its full-year tally.