€10bn in Anglo loans start move to Nama

ANGLO IRISH Bank began transferring up to €10 billion in loans to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) at the weekend as part of the first tranche of its borrowings moving to the agency.

Nama acquired loans from Anglo with a nominal value of €4 billion at the weekend. An additional €6 billion is expected to move at the end of this week.

The discount applied to Anglo’s first tranche of loans is expected to be close to 55 per cent, subject to additional data checks and foreign exchange rates at time of the final transfer.

This is higher than the 50 per cent haircut indicated by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in his speech to the Dáil on March 30th.

Nama is acquiring €16 billion in loans from AIB, Anglo, Bank of Ireland, Irish Nationwide and EBS in the first tranche of transfers. These relate to the 10 largest borrowers with the banks.

The overall discount on these loans will be 49 per cent.

Anglo is set to transfer €36 billion of property loans to Nama from a total of €81 billion that will move to the agency.

A spokesman for Nama said the second tranche of loans will begin to transfer from mid-June. This will comprise €8.5 billion of loans from the next 20 largest borrowers. The third tranche is expected in early July.

The spokesman said Nama was “optimistic” that delays that occurred in transferring the first tranche of loans “should not recur” during the next phase.