Ires Reit has named Eddie Byrne, a former executive with US investment firm Lone Star and Anglo Irish Bank, as its next chief executive as the property group presses ahead with a strategic review that may result in its sale or break-up.
Mr Byrne succeeds Margaret Sweeney who plans to step down after 6½ years in charge at the end of April, days before the company’s annual general meeting.
Mr Byrne had most recently served as joint managing partner of Lone Star’s Quintain Ireland house-building unit between 2019 and the end of last year. He was previously managing director of a Lone Star affiliate responsible for all of the firm’s Irish investments from early 2013.
Mr Byrne was head of lending at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American business between 2005 and 2011. However, the higher level of real equity applied to property loan deals in Anglo Irish Bank’s US business than its home market before the global financial crisis would stand to the lender.
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Anglo’s $9.6 billion (€8.8 billion) US commercial loan book would end up being sold to banking giants Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Lone Star, for a reported 80 cents on the dollar in 2011. By contrast, Anglo was forced to accept a 62 per cent discount on Irish and British loans transferred to the National Asset Management Agency during the crisis.
“Eddie has an extensive track record across Irish and international real estate, including most recently in the Irish residential sector, and has significant experience in building teams, interacting with local authorities, raising capital, executing transactions and developing strategic initiatives,” said Hugh Scott-Barrett, chairman of Ires.
“Eddie’s experience will be a significant and complementary addition as we continue our previously announced strategic review which is considering all strategic options available to maximise value for shareholders.”
Mr Scott-Barrett said last month that the group plans to issue a “substantive update” by the agm on May 2nd on a strategic review that had been promised in early January in an effort to appease investors. A Canadian activist investor, Vision Capital, has waged a public campaign for the company to put itself up on the market or dispose its assets. Ires has 3,734 apartments and houses.
While Vision failed to secure enough support to replace five Ires directors, it has since used the fact that 40 per cent of investors backed its resolutions to press for board representation for shareholders looking for an early liquidity event.
[ Starwood reticent on Ires strategy after building up 1.5% stakeOpens in new window ]
The Ires review will include assessing a “full range of strategic options”, including mergers, the company’s status as a listed real-estate investment trust and a sale of the business or its assets.
Since Quintain Ireland was set up in 2019, it has achieved more than 5,000 planning permissions and built about 1,500 rental and private homes on sites including at Cherrywood in south Dublin, Portmarnock in the north of the county and in Adamstown, west Dublin.
“The real-estate sector is going through a period of unprecedented change, making this a very exciting time to be joining the business,” said Mr Byrne. “I look forward to working with Hugh and the board in exploring value creation opportunities for shareholders as part of the strategic review, and I am excited to work with the Ires team, its partners and all stakeholders to develop and realise those opportunities.”
Ires’s founder, Canadian property group Capreit, has reduced its holding in the company to 16.3 per cent from 18.7 per cent in the space of a little over a month. However, the emergence of US property specialist Starwood Capital on the shareholder register during the same period, building up a 1.9 per cent, has prompted speculation about its intentions.
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