Lloyds mulls sale of €650 million in Irish real estate loans

Lloyds Banking Group is considering the sale of about €650 million of Irish real estate loans as the lender extracts itself from Western Europe's biggest property crash, according to a person with knowledge of the planned transaction.

The UK's second-biggest government-aided bank will have to sell at a discount, the person said without being more specific. He declined to be identified because the sale plans haven't yet been finalised. Lloyds spokesman Ian Kitts, declined to comment.

In 2010 Lloyds began to run down and close the Irish unit it acquired two years earlier as part of a takeover of HBOS. More than 90 per cent of its £7.4 billion (€8.6 billion) Irish commercial real estate loan book is impaired, according to the London-based lender's annual report.

CarVal Investors agreed to buy €380 million of Irish and UK property loans from the bank at about 25 per cent of their face value in November.

Lloyds also agreed to sell £1.5 billion of Irish commercial real estate loans to Apollo Global Management for 10 per cent of face value that same month.

Bloomberg