Kearney says Executive missed big chance to buy Nama loans

Did the Northern Ireland Executive squander an opportunity to acquire the Nama loans portfolio in the North and consequently lose out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to transform the local economy?

Belfast property developer Patrick Kearney believes so.

Kearney is the west Belfast-born businessman behind Kilmona Holdings, a company with significant retail, leisure, office, industrial and residential property developments.

He has said the Executive should have bought the loans portfolio, which had a par value of £4.5 billion, when it was sold to Cerberus Capital Management for £1.2 billion last April.

His theory is that the Executive should have acquired it “on behalf of Northern Ireland” and then managed the portfolio to help finance some of the challenges it faces, from welfare reform to lower corporation tax rates.

As always the inevitable question Ireland is who would have paid for this?

Kearney didn't share any suggestions on how the Executive could have got its hands on the money to bid for the loans portfolio when he appeared in front of the Northern Ireland Finance Committee last week. Instead he focused on sharing with the committee – investigating the sale of Nama's Project Eagle loans portfolio in the North – how the agency had tried to destroy him.

He is, in his own words “not Nama’s biggest fan”. That might explain why he believes elected representatives who lobbied investors to buy the Northern Ireland portfolio from Nama did nothing wrong.

He found himself at the mercy of Nama when his many loans were transferred to the agency and, like many developers and borrowers, he engaged in a battle with the agency to save his business.

Nama’s approach was never very popular in certain circles. There was an element in the North that never quite trusted the agency.According to Nama, there was technically no reason why the Executivecould not have made the call.

Setting aside the issue of where the money might have come from, there is also the fact that neither the Executive or senior civil servants had any experience in this area and would have had to engage a commercial organisation to manage the portfolio – and share the profits.

The Executive would also have had to shoulder any risk and it could have, if markets had not recovered, been left with an overwhelming debt.

So why then did Kearney, widely acknowledged as an astute businessman, feel the need to share his theory about what the Executive should have done about Nama’s loans with the Stormont inquiry?

Was it just something he wanted to get off his chest as part of a general rant about how bad Nama was to him or just a good opportunity to paint certain politicians who engaged in lobbying prospective buyers in a better light?

Either way, senior figures in the local property sector confirm no state approach to Nama was considered. Kearney’s wishful thinking was never a viable option as far as they are concerned.