Asset management agencies Nama and the UKAR were responsible for 36% of all non-performing loan sales in 2015 with Cerberus their biggest customer, according to research by Cushman & Wakefield.
The pair were the biggest sellers in a market that saw €85.9bn (£64.6bn) of loans sold across Europe in 2015.
Cushman & Wakefield’s quarterly European Real Estate Loan Sales Market report found that Nama and UKAR sold a total face value of €30.5bn in NPLs over the course of the year. Cerberus was the biggest buyer, taking in a total of just over €28bn.
Nearly €20bn of this came from just two deals, Projects Arrow and Granite, from Nama and UKAR respectively. This pushed Cerberus ahead of Lone Star, which was the next-largest buyer of NPLs over the year.
These two deals also marked a shift in the type of NPL portfolios coming up for sale in 2015. Residential portfolios totalled 38% of sales compared with 18% in 2014.
The UK and Ireland continued to dominate international sales, with 71% of all portfolios emanating from the two nations but the flow of portfolios coming to the market is expected to diminish in 2016.
Iberian sales are expected to become a strong theme of 2016, according to the new “heat map” included in C&W’s report.
The current value of NPLs on the market is currently €78.6bn and Spain now counts for 54% of those ongoing sales.
However, with Spain’s €201bn of exposure and Portugal providing another €11bn, C&W expects volume to increase substantially this year.
The only other market outside of the two Iberian markets that is likely to see a similar pick-up in sales will be the Netherlands, believes C&W, following on from that country’s 66% year-on-year increase in volume reported in 2015.
