The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) and UK investment group Oaktree face a minuscule recovery on their investment in the landmark North Dock office complex beside Dubin’s 3Arena, as agents appointed by receivers to the scheme seek a knock-down price of €130 million.
US investments giant Pimco, which provided €120 million of senior funding to the project, appointed Eamonn Richardson and Kieran Wallace of Interpath Advisory as receivers over the assets last month.
They have since hired CBRE to sell the scheme, comprising 200,00sq ft of office space across two buildings that are half let out.
Oaktree has a 60 per cent equity stake in the Liffeyside project and Nama 40 per cent. Bennet Construction was the design and build contractor for the so-called near-zero energy buildings, which were completed in 2020 during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tenants include California-based biopharma group Gilead Sciences, US securities brokerage firm Interactive Brokers, and Blueface, a cloud-based telecommunications company.
The Oaktree-led consortium, known as Targeted Investment Opportunities (TIO), put the offices on the market last August for €155 million but failed to receive a bid. It was subsequently agreed that receivers be appointed by Pimco to push through a sale.
The appointment of CBRE was first reported by real estate publication React News.
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A Nama spokesman said the agency still expects to end up in a “net cash positive” position on the development, meaning it will have received more cash out of it than it put in. It used the proceeds from the sale of the site to TIO to recoup debt on the property and reinvest in the project, he said.
“Any further cash distributions to Nama from this investment will be dependent on the sales proceeds ultimately generated from the receiver’s sale of the property,” he added. Representatives for Oaktree, which faces a loss on the project, declined to comment.
The complex is among several large office buildings to have succumbed to receivership as the sector has been hit by a shift towards hybrid working in the wake of the pandemic as well as a sharp spike in interest rates over the past two years.
Last September, German lender Helaba installed Grant Thornton as receivers over the Beckett Building in Dublin’s north docklands, which is owned by South Korean investors and leased by Facebook owner Meta. Seoul-based KB Securities bought the building in 2018 for about €120 million. It made a failed attempt to sell the property early last year when bids came in at about €50 million.
Deloitte was last month appointed as receivers to No 2 Dublin Landings, a 100,000sq ft office building fully let to flexible workspace giant WeWork, which filed for bankruptcy protection last year, in the city’s north docklands. A German-South Korean consortium acquired the building in 2018.
Elsewhere, Bank of Ireland and AIB appointed receivers in a consensual arrangement in November over a portfolio of property assets owned by developer Johnny Ronan, including office buildings Connaught House and Percy Exchange in Dublin 4 and Kilmore House in the north docklands.
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