Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has appointed UK-based real estate advisory firm, Cushman & Wakefield, to advise on the sale of around €8 billion in par value loans, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The state-controlled bad asset manager, which took around €74 billion in loans off the balance sheets of Irish lenders, is now preparing to sell some of the smaller loans on its book, PDI reported earlier this month, and tendered for an advisor.
Cushman has been appointed to advise on packaging the loans into distinct portfolios that it will put up for sale over the course of this year and into 2016. The news was first reported by The Irish Times last weekend.
The loans for sale all have a par value of less than €75 million and relate to around 500 individual borrowers, as reported.
It is not clear what discount was applied to the assets when they were acquired by NAMA but the average discount applied by the agency overall was 57 percent.
The planned sales follow a series of portfolio sales by the agency last year. In April, Cerberus bought a €4.5 billion loan book from NAMA which was followed in May by Blackstone’s purchase of a €1.8 billion portfolio, known as Project Tower.
The state-controlled agency sold €10 billion of par value assets in 16 deals last year, according to research by Cushman & Wakefield.