Nama interest in Quinlan assets at home and abroad

BACKGROUND:Properties taken over yesterday by Nama are dotted around Dublin's swisher addresses

THE NATIONAL Asset Management Agency (Nama) and property player Derek Quinlan are involved with each other on a number of levels.

Nama has an interest in Quinlan’s personal assets in Ireland and abroad, and also in those in which he invested when he was one of the principals of Quinlan Private, which he has since left and which is now known as Avestus.

Quinlan invested in a number of the properties bought by the partnership, which purchased and managed properties in Ireland and Europe for groups of wealthy investors. It and its partners generally put up some of their own equity when they were buying properties.

The properties taken over yesterday by Nama are dotted around Dublin’s swisher addresses, and are mainly residential. Quinlan and members of his family own these premises, which were bought with the aid of loans from a number of the five Irish banks that are taking part in the Nama process: AIB, Anglo Irish, Bank of Ireland, EBS and Irish Nationwide.

They include an apartment in the Merrion Hotel, just across the road from Government Buildings. Another property, 29/30 Fitzwilliam Square, is situated nearby on the south side of a square of 18th-century buildings that mainly serve as offices, but which has some residences, including one owned by Sir Anthony O’Reilly.

The rest are around what is popularly known as Dublin’s “embassy belt”, an area that includes Raglan, Shrewsbury and Ailesbury roads in the Ballsbridge area of the city.

They include No 8 Raglan Road, which Quinlan gave as his address on company documents. He now lives in Epalinges in Lausanne, close to the Swiss-French border.

Houses in the embassy belt area tend to be large and are surrounded by sizeable gardens.

They commanded prices of up to €10 million at the height of the property boom, but generally sell for less than €3 million now, if they sell at all.

Quinlan also has a number of personal commercial property investments. In 2007, he and Glen Maud’s Propinvest bought Citigroup’s European headquarters in east London from Royal Bank of Scotland for €1.48 billion.

He borrowed €300 million from Irish banks to fund his part of the deal. That property is now on the market and Nama confirmed this week that it had been actively seeking its sale for some time.

Along with developer Bernard McNamara, he is one of the backers of Becbay, the consortium that paid South Wharf €412 million for the old Ardagh glass bottle site in Ringsend, Dublin in 2007. That property is now worth an estimated €60 million, although there is no sign of any buyer interest.

Quinlan began his career with the old Coopers and Lybrand accountancy firm before moving to the Revenue Commissioners, where he worked as a tax inspector.

In the 1980s the gamekeeper turned poacher and went into business for himself, advising well-off people on ways to get the best value out of the numerous property-related tax breaks that were available at the time.

He set up Quinlan Private in 1989. The business did deals in Ireland, Britain and also homed in on eastern Europe.

Its best-remembered deal was the €1.1 billion purchase of the Savoy group of hotels in London in 2004.