Goldman Sachs pulls out of Project Arrow sale

Joint venture bidders Goldman Sachs and CarVal Investors have pulled out of the bidding in the National Asset Management Agency’s sale of € 8.4 billion worth of loans in the Project Arrow portfolio. It is the largest ever loan portfolio put up for sale by Nama.

The joint venture bidders are not expected to submit a binding bid when they are called in early October. This leaves just two bidders in the running - US investment fund Cerberus Capital Management, which last year acquired the controversial Project Eagle from Nama, and Apollo Global Management.

UK commercial property blog CoStar News, which first has reported the news, did not give a reason for Goldman and CarVal’s withdrawal from the race at such a late stage.

Project Arrow consists of non-performing loans with a value of €7.2bn, secured mostly against Irish real estate, and Nama appointed real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield to handle the sale of the portfolio in February.

However, Independent Wexford TD Mick Wallace recently called for an independent investigation into the sale, given that the loans are non-performing, and therefore it was not “rational” or in the interest of the taxpayer to sell them off in one go.

Mr Wallace has previously made a number of claims about the workings of Nama in the Dáil and, in particular, its sale of Project Eagle last year to the aformentioned Cerberus.