Ires Reit, the State’s largest private-sector residential landlord, has granted UK investment firm Barings Investment an extension to finalise a potential takeover offer.
The company announced on September 28th it had received an offer of €1.386 a share from Barings Investment, which would value the business at €726.9 million.
Ires Reit, led by chief executive Eddie Byrne, said at the time of the announcement the board “would be minded to recommend” a deal if a formal offer were to emerge by a deadline set for 5pm on November 9th.
A stock market update from Ires Reit on Monday said it has given Baring International Investment Limited a new deadline of 5pm on Tuesday November 10th to make a formal bid or withdraw its offer.
RM Block
The announcement by Ires Reit said Barings has confirmed to the board there has been “no change to the possible offer value” and that it had completed its due diligence.
Ires Reit said its board has evaluated the offer, together with its advisers, and has unanimously concluded that the offer is at a level which it would be “minded to recommend” to the company’s shareholders.
It added that Barings had requested a short extension to the bid deadline and the Irish Takeover Panel had consented.
The listed company, which has a portfolio of more than 3,600 rental homes, said the proposal in September was the fifth made by Barings since early August.
The offer marked a 30.7 per cent premium to Ires’s closing price on September 25th and was broadly in line with its reported net tangible asset value per share as of the end of June.
Baring International Investment Limited, the London-based firm that made the approach, is linked to the Barings group, which is wholly owned by American life insurance company MassMutual.
In September, in the hours following the offer, shares in the company rose 20.2 per cent to €1.274.
Ires Reit’s share price rose further in October and closed at a valuation of €1.302 per share last Friday.
The approach from Barings has come three years after Ires became the subject of a failed campaign, led by then dissident investor Vision Capital, for the company to be sold or broken up, following years of share price weakness. In 2025, Vision Capital completed its divestment from the company.
In the past two years, the company has brought in a number of new senior staff, including Byrne, who took over from Margaret Sweeney as chief executive in 2024. Earlier this year, former RTÉ finance chief Mari Hurley succeeded Brian Fagan as chief financial officer.
In the first half of this year, prior to details being announced about the approach, shares in Ires rose by as much as 25 per cent amid changes to the State’s rent rules.
The new rent legislation, which came into force in March, overhauled the former rent pressure zone system, allowing landlords to reset rents to market rates between tenancies. Byrne said in August that the new regime had improved the investment outlook for the sector while maintaining protections for tenants.
However, market expectations of a fresh series of interest rate hikes – as central banks tackle inflation – saw Ires’s shares falling from those highs in recent months before the company confirmed the bid approach.
