Seen & Heard: Nama on Nationwide standby

Nama is on standby to take over part of the former Irish Nationwide Building Society's €1.8 billion mortgage book, the Sunday Times reports.

While a number of investment funds submitted final bids for the loans more than two weeks ago, a deal has yet to be done and the newspaper said there is “a growing sense that the State agency will now play a role in the final sale”.

It added that sources say an announcement on the sale by special liquidators Kieran Wallace and Eamon Richardson of KPMG could be up to two weeks away.

The parties that submitted final bids included Lone Star, Apollo Global Management and Oak Tree Capital. The mortgage book, put up for sale as Project Sand, consists of 11,825 borrowers with 12,702 mortgages, totalling €1.8 billion, 10,622 of them are home loans, while the rest are buy-to-let. A total of 4,175 loans – 39 per cent of the total – are in arrears.

The book has been carved up into four tranches for the purpose of the sale, with bidders asked to make offers on each or all four.

Wellness weighs division sale
Wellness Foods, the healthfood company backed by bloodstock magnate John Magnier and businessman JP McManus, is considering a sale of its Dorset Cereals division for £50 million, the Sunday Business Post said.

The newspaper said Wellness had received a number of unsolicited bids for Dorset Cereals, which makes granola bars, and is considering whether to formally put it on the market.

Wellness bought a majority stake in the business in 2008 and took the remaining shares in 2012. The company has sales of £36 million a year and posted an operating profit of £1.4 million in 2012. Lion Capital, which owns 40 per cent of Weetabix, has been named as a possible suitor.

Tullow Oil gets $100m refund

Exploration and production group Tullow Oil received a $100 million tax refund from the Norwegian government last year, according the Sunday Independent.

The newspaper reported that the rebate helped the Irish-backed group to cut its effective tax rate to 32 per cent from 41 per cent in 2013.

Norway’s tax rebate system compensates companies for 78 per cent of exploration costs where they fail to find commercial quantities of oil or gas. The incentive is designed to attract operators in to explore the Scandinavian country’s territorial waters.

Tullow is mainly focused on exploration and production in Africa and to a certain extent South America but entered Norway last year with the purchase of local player, Spring Energy. It identified a new oil basin there in the Barents Sea.