THE NATIONAL Asset Management Agency (Nama) will have cash reserves of €1 billion after it repays €250 million on bonds held by the banks and a €49 million loan advanced by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan.

The biggest beneficiary of the repayments ahead of schedule will be State-owned Anglo Irish Bank, which will receive about €100 million, followed by almost fully nationalised AIB, which will receive about €75 million.

The repayments are based on the proportionate amount of senior Nama bonds issued to the lenders in return for property and related loans transferred to the agency. They will be used to help the funding of the banks.

Anglo and AIB have transferred the largest amount of loans, moving €35 billion and €18.5 billion respectively.

This is Nama’s first repayment of senior bonds. Some €28.575 billion in senior bonds were issued to cover 95 per cent of the €30.2 billion price paid for loans of €71.2 billion. The remaining 5 per cent was issued in subordinated bonds which will be paid if the banks help Nama recover the loans.

Frank Daly, chairman of Nama, said the fact that the agency can start making repayments reflected its “current strong cash position”.

Nama approved property sales worth €2 billion last year and a further €500 million in the first six weeks of this year.

The €49 million loan repaid to the Minister was provided to Nama in March 2010 to inject equity in the special purpose vehicle set up to keep the agency’s debt off the Government’s book.

The agency confirmed that internet giant Google has agreed to buy the 15-storey Montevetro building in Grand Canal Dock, the tallest commercial building in Dublin. Google is paying €99.9 million for the 210,000sq ft building.

Nama said that recovered more than what it paid for the loan on the property due from the developer, Real Estate Opportunities (REO), and what it provided in working capital loans to complete the building.

Mr Daly said the completion and sale of the building showed “the positive potential of Nama to support the commercial property market in Ireland”.

Part of the €592 million made available by Nama in working capital loans to development companies was used to complete the building, the agency said. Treasury Holdings is a majority shareholder of REO.

Nama said it expected to acquire up to a further €5 billion in loans “as soon as is practicable”.

This will bring the total assets transferred to the agency from five participating banks to €76.2 billion before a further €12 billion in loans of less than €20 million each will be acquired under the terms of the EU-IMF bailout.

Anglo took a further write-down on the value of the bonds issued by Nama, pushing its loss on the accounting treatment of the State-backed debt to €2.2 billion.

The State-owned bank applied a discount of almost 9 per cent to the agency’s senior bonds in its first-half results last year, but increased this to 15 per cent in its full-year unaudited accounts.

Anglo valued the bonds based on how the market would value them. Bank of Ireland and AIB have applied a discount of 1.5 per cent, reflecting how much the European Central Bank would value them as collateral for loans.

The bank said the €17.6 billion loss it expected to make for 2010 included “a negative fair value adjustment of €2.2 billion on Nama bonds received”.