The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) is on track to be down to as little as €10 million of loans tied to 10 ongoing litigation cases by the time it is wound down at the end of the year, according to the bad bank’s chief executive.
The agency, which took on 5,000 borrowers as it acquired loans at a discounted value of €32 billion during the financial crisis from domestic lenders, was down to actively managing 34 debtors at the end of March, it said in its latest annual report, published on Wednesday.
A further 44 are being monitored under forbearance strategies or exit agreements, it said.
“The plan for our remaining €100 million of [loan] assets is that the majority of those will be sold by the end of the year,” Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh told reporters. “What will be left will be about 10 litigation cases linked to assets probably of about €10 million to €20 million.”
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These will end up in a special resolution unit that is being set up in the National Treasury Management Agency (Nama) to absorb and manage remnants of both Nama and Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), formerly Anglo Irish Bank, subject to enabling legislation being passed.
Nama has increased the estimated lifetime cash contribution it will end up giving to the Exchequer by €300 million to €5.5 billion.
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The increase has been driven by an upgrade to the agency’s lifetime surplus target to €5.05 billion from €4.8 billion, previously.
It has also marginally increased its corporation tax projection by €50 million to €450 million. The exchequer has so far received €4.69 billion of Nama’s expected lifetime contribution.
“The Nama board and my colleagues throughout the agency have always seen our role as set out by the legislation passed by the Oireachtas in 2009 as trying to do the very best we can on behalf of the taxpayer and the State,” said chief executive Brendan McDonagh.
“Every decision, every engagement with a debtor, every transaction – they were framed against a commercial backdrop of maximising the amount that we believed could be recovered for the State.”
Nama has reduced the size of its portfolio – which had an original value of €72 billion before the property crash – has been through a mix of selling of portfolios of loans over the years and debtors repaying their loans by working with Nama, or refinancing elsewhere.
Its workforce has fallen from a peak of 380 people in 2015, which it started phased redundancies, to about 70 currently.
Its remaining €447 million of property assets is mainly made up of about €350 million social housing portfolio that will be transferred to the Land Development Agency (LDA) by the end of the year.
It also includes two land banks – in counties Dublin and Kildare – that Nama took control of late last year and which are capable of delivering about 4,000 homes.
The sites, valued at some €70 million in total, are also expected to transfer to the LDA.
The remaining asset – a 40 per cent stake in a Dublin docklands building, called Ten Hannover Quay – was sold last month to Zara founder Amancio Ortega’s investment firm Pontegadea. The property, which was 60 per cent owned by US property group Kennedy Wilson, was bought for almost €70 million.
