THE PROPORTION of performing loans at the National Asset Management Agency fell to 21 per cent at the end of September 2011 from 23 per cent three months earlier, its latest quarterly accounts show.
The reduction was due largely to the number of income-generating loans disposed of by the agency between June and September last year. Nama chooses to sell performing assets when there is greater benefit from a sale than the cost of holding the asset.
The State loans agency said it made an operating profit of €317 million in the period and a total of €526 million over the first nine months of last year.
Nama did not disclose whether it was profitable on a net basis as it did not take a quarterly impairment charge on loans with an acquisition value of €26.4 billion at the end of September 2011.
The agency will not disclose the 2011 charge until it publishes its full-year accounts in the summer as it only assesses the effect of falling values on an annual basis.
An impairment charge of €1.485 billion left the agency with a loss of €1.1 billion for 2010.
Nama said it had a strong final quarter of 2011 and ended last year with €3.8 billion in liquidity. It had cash of €1.9 billion last September.
Nama chairman Frank Daly said the agency was generating significant cashflows and remained on course to meet a target of paying down a quarter of its debt, or €7.5 billion, by the end of 2013.
More than €1.4 billion of cash was generated during the third quarter, raised from €1.8 billion of cash receipts from debtors.
Nama, set up by the last government to remove the most toxic loans from the banking sector, acquired loans with a face value of €74 billion from five financial institutions for €31 billion. The agency said Nama’s board had approved a new estimate of costs for 2012 amounting to €194 million, a reduction of 20 per cent on the last estimate in September.
In the third quarter of 2011, Nama repaid €500 million in debt on the bonds it issued to the banks as payment for the loans, bringing the total debts repaid since the agency’s inception to €1.6 billion.
Nama paid out €199 million on interest, expenses and other funding costs in the period and advanced €71 million to finish projects and for working capital.
The agency said the Minister for Finance had approved Nama’s deferred mortgage scheme to stimulate residential property transactions and that talks were ongoing with the European Commission on state aid implications of the scheme. Nama also disclosed that control of the property loans of developer Liam Carroll, one of the top 10 debtors at Nama, had been transferred from four receivers to one, accountancy firm Deloitte.
The transfer of the Carroll properties, including the skeletal building in Dublin docklands once earmarked for Anglo Irish Bank, would simplify the receivership process.
Nama also published a listing of 43 properties against which it has taken enforcement action, bringing to 1,093 the list of properties, including multiple properties such as apartment blocks.
The latest properties, to which receivers have been appointed, are residential, development, agricultural and industrial assets located primarily in Kerry and Wexford. Many were controlled by building firms Cleary Doyle and Banna.
