HOLLIDAY FENOGLIO Fowler, the US firm which lost out on the contract to sell Anglo Irish Bank’s US loans, has been awarded the contract to sell Bank of Ireland’s US commercial property business.
As reported in yesterday’s Irish Times, the New York-based property broker and investment bank Eastdil has been appointed by Anglo to sell the State-owned bank’s US loans, beating Texas-based property specialists Holliday Fenoglio Fowler.
Both firms had been hired by Anglo late last year to carry out a loan-by-loan analysis of the book.
Anglo has the biggest US portfolio of all the Irish banks, with loans of €7.6 billion. Among the deals financed by Anglo in the US are the Apthorp apartment block, the Ralph Lauren store in New York and the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Boston.
The Bank of Ireland loans, which include $1.5 billion in performing loans, are primarily secured on commercial real estate in New York, Boston and Washington. Bank of Ireland has been ordered by the Financial Regulator to reduce its loan portfolio by €30 billion by the end of 2013.
The bank recently sold Bank of Ireland Real Estate Investment Management to Kennedy Wilson, a Californian real estate company.
The Bank of Ireland unit manages $2.3 billion worth of investment property, mostly in Europe, comprising 19 assets, including offices, shops and apartments.
Last month, AIB confirmed it had agreed to sell a portfolio of about $1 billion worth of US commercial mortgages to the private equity group Blackstone and US bank Wells Fargo. AIB, 93 per cent owned by the State, has to reduce loans by €19 billion by 2013. – (Additional reporting: Bloomberg)
