Loans tied to Indo offices and Paddy McKillen listed in Ulster Bank’s €1.1 billion sell-off

Loans tied to Independent News & Media's headquarters, upmarket homes in Belfast and Dublin, and properties backed by developer, Paddy McKillen feature in a €1.1 billion debt portfolio that Ulster Bank and its parent have just put up for sale.

Dubbed "project Achill" it will be the biggest portfolio of loans that Ulster and its parent, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), have put on the block as part of their efforts to clear their books of boom-era property debt.

Almost 83 per cent of the portfolio by value is Irish, with English and Scottish loans making up the balance. Some of the properties to which the debts relate include Independent House on Talbot Street in Dublin, the offices of newspaper group Independent News & Media. The newspaper’s building forms part of pool A, project Achill’s biggest subdivision, which is made up of 22 loans, half of which are non-performing, with a total face value of €511 million. That pool also includes Blackrock Business Park in Dublin and Exchange House in Belfast. Alongside those sits a €49.7 million loan to developer Bernard Carroll that falls due at the end of next year.

The debt is secured against houses in Skerries and Malahide in Co Dublin, a 128-acre site with planning permission in nearby Kinsealy, offices on Merrion Square in the centre of the capital and a range of other properties. According to a post on finance website, Costar, this week, they are now worth €38.2 million.

Another loan on the block as part of pool A is a €57 million loan to Kevin and Michael Corbett and secured on a group of properties that includes homes, shops and offices in Cork. That part of the portfolio is delivering rent of €2.37 million a year.

Assets

The pool’s other assets are a Primark store in Cambridge in southeast

England

and a Russell & Bromley outlet in Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

Another pool consists entirely of a 50 per cent share in a £221 million loan to Belfast Office Properties, jointly owned by developer Paddy McKillen and businessman Padraig Drayne. The properties linked to the loan are the Waterfront Plaza in Belfast, whose tenants include Pricewaterhousecoopers, Ards Shopping Centre, Newtownards in Co Down and a Scottish shopping mall. They are delivering net rent of €8.59 million.

The upscale Arc apartments and the Gateway Offices, both in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter urban regeneration scheme to which Ulster Bank was a big lender, make up a third pool. Those properties are worth €78 million while the loan secured against them has an outstanding balance of €91 million.

An €87 million loan to developer and Nama client, Eugene Larkin, secured against 208 homes in Tyrrelstown, Dublin and some commercial property makes up another pool.

In all, project Achill has six pools. Only pool A has a mix of borrowers, the other five relate to a single debtor. Ulster Bank would not comment yesterday.