Profits at John Byrne's Carlisle Trust up £4m

Mr John Byrne's property group, Carlisle Trust Ltd and its subsidiaries, have reported a rise in accumulated profits of more than £4 million (€5.08 million) during the year to December 1999, the latest year for which results are available.

The results compare favourably to 1998 when the group's accounts recorded a small drop in accumulated profits.

Two of the companies in the group had unchanged debts with IIB Bank since 1997, according to the 1999 results. Carlisle Trust owed the bank £9.8 million and Alstead Securities owed £5.2 million, according to the accounts.

The group owns a number of well-known properties in Dublin, including O'Connell Bridge House, the Companies Office building on Parnell Square and D'Olier House on D'Olier Street. In its annual return made up to September 2000, Carlisle Trust recorded indebtedness of £10.7 million.

Carlisle Trust is owned by an unlimited Cayman Islands company, Prospect Holdings, which is controlled by a Cayman trust, according to the annual return.

Ansbacher (Cayman) bank owns 1,080 ordinary shares in Carlisle, while Mr John Byrne and his wife, Ciara, own four preference shares each. Mr Anthony Gore Grimes owns two preference shares, according to the recently filed return.

During the 1999 application to the High Court for the appointment of inspectors to Ansbacher Cayman, it was stated that Carlisle Trust and one of its subsidiaries, Alstead Securities, took out loans worth £17.5 million sterling from IIB Bank during the 1990s, and that the loans were backed by funds in the Ansbacher deposits.

The remaining accounts in IIB related to the secretive Ansbacher deposits were frozen in 1997, when the deposits were discovered.

The move was instigated by IIB which was concerned, among other matters, about possible retrospective DIRT bills which might arise from accounts deemed to have been personal deposit accounts, rather than accounts owned by Ansbacher bank.

Carlisle Trust Ltd is the 100 per cent owner of six subsidiaries, according to the documents in the Companies Office. These companies are: Alstead Securities; Dublin City Estates Ltd; Goreville Ltd; Pritco Ltd; JEC Properties; and Smithfield Development Ltd, formerly Endcamp Ltd.

In the year ended December 1999 Carlisle had properties worth £15.8 million, according to its accounts. A slight increase in the profit and loss account to £874,095, from £759,043, was reported.

Alstead Properties had fixed assets of £27.9 million in December 1999. The profit and loss account balance moved to £10 million, from £6.9 million a year earlier.

Dublin City Estates Ltd showed an increase in the profit and loss account balance of £168,000, to £117,000. Smithfield Property Development Ltd reported a £700,000 drop in the negative balance in its profit and loss account.

Goreville Ltd has no profit and loss account filed for 1999 and JEC Properties has filed no accounts.

There was no change to the accumulated profit figure of Pritco.