Cerberus appoints receivers to Irish firms

US company Cerberus has appointed receivers to a series of properties and companies whose debts it bought from the State and Ulster Bank in separate deals worth a total of more than €2 billion.

Cerberus last year bought property loans in Ireland, Britain and elsewhere from the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) and Ulster Bank, giving it the right to collect about €10 billion in unpaid balances or enforce its security by appointing receivers to the assets involved.

The US private equity fund's local subsidiaries recently appointed receivers, either Ken Fennell of Deloitte or Tom O'Brien of Mazars, to nine companies where the debtors were unable to agree a settlement with their new creditor, or could not find an alternative lender to refinance the debt.

The assets siezed by the fund include a property that was part of a self-administered pension over which stockbroker, Goodbody, was trustee. The firm itself had no liability in relation to the property. The other companies are largely small entities with single properties, some of which, such as Atlantis Developments, were already under the control of receivers appointed by the banks.

One of them, Freshcape, owed money against a property in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham. Others, such as Blackwater Valley Developments and TJ Gaughan Construction had receivers appointed over parts of their assets, which were mostly single plots of land bought with bnak borrowings.

Cerberus subsidiaries Promontoria Arrow and Promontoria Aran appointed the receivers. The US fund used these entities to buy the loans from Nama and the bank. Cerberus paid Nama €800 million for Project Arrow, a portfolio of more than 1,900 loans secured on properties in Ireland, Britain and elsewhere, on which €6.25 billion was outstanding.