Nama’s latest and largest loan portfolio has been snapped up by US private equity giant Cerberus for around £800m.
Cerberus has added the portfolio to the long list of NPL portfolios it has won over the past two years, including the controversial Project Eagle it acquired from Nama in June 2014.
Cerberus now takes control of a highly granular portfolio of loans covering more than 2,400 properties spread mostly across Ireland.
The portfolio, Nama’s largest by face value, attracted a number of early bidders into a process run by Cushman & Wakefield.
Rivals including Goldman Sachs and CarVal working together plus Lone Star dropped out of the process before binding bids were finalised last Friday.
By winning the Arrow portfolio Cerberus is likely to attract considerable scrutiny from the press and Northern Irish politicians following its involvement in the Project Eagle sale last year.
Project Eagle has been surrounded by controversy over a mysterious £7m “fee” and allegations of backhanders, all of which Cerberus has strongly denied any knowledge of.
In winning the bid, Cerberus has won a portfolio of loans with a face value of €7.2bn. Most of the assets in the portfolio are residential assets but there are a significant number of commercial assets among the security on the 1,532 loans.
The largest single loan contained in the sale is understood to be a €10m loan on an asset now valued at closer to €5m.
