STATE-OWNED Anglo Irish Bank has appointed the bank’s head of credit risk Niall Tuite to liaise with Nama on the agency’s purchase of loans with a face value of €28 billion from the bank.
Nama will buy loans with a book value of €16 billion secured on land and development that are heavily impaired, with the remaining €12 billion in associated loans backed by investment assets.
About 94 per cent of the land and development loans at Anglo Irish are being transferred to Nama. The remainder will remain with the bank as the agency is not buying development loans with a face value of less than €5 million.
Anglo Irish is excluding any borrowers where development or landbank accounts for less than 15 per cent of their overall loan value.
Mr Tuite and his team are working through forms on each borrower where the bank has to completed 337 fields of information for Nama’s valuation process.
The Nama liaison team at Anglo Irish may be moved out of the bank’s headquarters on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin to the bank’s private banking offices on Burlington Road in Ballsbridge.
The bank has not said how much the Government will pay for the loans. Applying the average 30 per cent “haircut” would mean that Nama would pay Anglo €19.6 billion, though a higher discount may be applied to the bank.
Mr Tuite has played a key role at the bank’s loan approval meetings over recent years and worked closely with the bank’s former finance director Willie McAteer and head of the Irish business, Pat Whelan, on credit management.
As head of credit risk, Mr Tuite led these meetings, where loan applications were discussed and decisions on approval made.
Mr McAteer resigned last January, just weeks prior to the bank’s nationalisation, following the disclosure of hidden loans of up to €122 million to former Anglo Irish chairman Seán FitzPatrick.
Mr Whelan still holds a senior management position with the bank and is liaising with Mr Tuite on the Irish development and associated loans to be moved to Nama.
Almost 80 per cent, or €22 billion, of the loans being acquired by Nama are in Ireland. Some €11.5 billion of the €22 billion relates to land and development, and €10.5 billion relates to associated loans.
