What does a Nama exit mean?

So Seán Mulryan expects his Ballymore Properties to be free of the clutches of the National Asset Management Agency by 2015, a full five years before the State agency is due to wind up its activities.

Mulryan is considered the star pupil of all the 800-plus debtors dealing with Nama on the basis of what you can’t avoid you should embrace. Ballymore is thought to be one of the top 10 debtors on Nama’s books with its debts once totalling €1.5 billion at face value.

While many of his peers sought to frustrate Nama at every turn and some to litigate, Mulryan chose a different path by working with the agency to pay down his loans and progress some of the many projects he had on the blocks.

The latest is a £700 million (€827 million) luxury apartment development in east London aimed at creating a Manhattan-style island. Launched yesterday in Hong Kong with the help of Mayor of London Boris Johnson, the plan is to build 1,700 apartments in Canning Town.

Up to one-third of the project is expected to be sold to Asian investors over the coming weeks, which will provide much of the capital to finish the scheme.

Once sold, City Island would "be another major element" to repay Ballymore debt taken over by Nama, company executive Paul Keogh proudly stated.

“We would hope to be clean of Nama and back in the equity markets by the middle of 2015,” said Keogh, who is Ballymore’s group strategy director.

“Next year will be quite active in terms of repaying the bulk of the debt. There will be residual bits left afterwards,” he said, adding that Ballymore has resumed building houses in Ireland.

In fact, Ballymore’s Irish residential arm, Ballymore Homes, said Keogh, will “probably” act as a builder for Nama on land that it took over from now-bankrupt property developers.

It’s not clear precisely what being free of Nama means.

Does it mean refinancing its loans in full or repaying the face value of the loans to Nama? Does it mean agreeing a full and final settlement of its debts with Nama?

What we know is that Nama is prevented from settling with defaulting debtors for less than the face value of their loans – that is, what the loans were originally worth, not what Nama paid the banks on transfer.

It can, however, sell loans to a third party at whatever sum it sees fit.

The sums involved have never been disclosed publicly so we might never find out the answers.

If Mulryan’s timetable for exiting Nama proves to be correct, his strategy for dealing with the all-powerful State agency might yet prove to be the smartest piece of business he has conducted in his long career.