Seen and Heard

Nama agrees to accept 45% of money owed by Elverys
Nama has agreed to accept less than half of the €23 million debt it is owed by sports retailer Elverys under a rescue plan for the business to be finalised this week, report

the Sunday Times and the Sunday Business Post.

The State assets agency, a secured creditor of Elverys, will recoup about 45 per cent of the money it is owed, according to the newspapers. An investor group assembled by Capnua, a Dublin corporate finance house, is putting up €16.75 million in equity and bank debt to take control of the group, its report says.

Unsecured creditors, who are owed almost €6 million by Elverys, will be paid 5 per cent of their debts. Elverys creditors last week approved a scheme of arrangement drawn up by the examiner, Simon Coyle of Mazars.

'Synergies' between wired and wireless world, says Malone
John Malone, the Irish-American billionaire owner of Liberty Global, has told the Sunday Independent he sees opportunity for "synergies" between the mobile telecoms market and cable companies, but he has declined to comment on whether Vodafone could acquire Liberty, which owns cable company UPC.

“We do have a close working relationship with those guys. They have been buying terrestrial [TV]assets, but we actually see a lot of synergies between the wireless and the wired world.”

Liberty has had “a number of meetings” with Vodafone, “looking at collaborative things”, he is quoted as saying. “We certainly play to a large extent in the same sandbox.”

Liberty recently acquired Virgin Media, a mobile internet and television company in Britain. "Virgin . . . put us into the wireless world in the UK with a good brand."

M&S seeks to appease investors
The management of Marks & Spencer will try to appease underwhelmed investors this week by hinting it will improve shareholder returns, perhaps through a hike in dividend payments or share buybacks, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The retailer will this week reveal that it has suffered a third year of declining profits as a result of the underperformance of its general merchandise division, which is primarily clothing. The division has endured 11 consecutive quarters of falling sales.

The trend has put pressure on M&S chief executive Marc Bolland, who will try to reassure investors that the bellwether stock will focus on improving margins over the next three years.

Bids of €300m lined up for development portfolio
Goldman Sachs and Lone Star are lining up bids of more than €300 million for a large portfolio of land development loans being sold by Ulster Bank, reports the Sunday Times.

Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary Ulster Bank has hired property firm CBRE to advise on the sale of the loans, which are secured on more than 1,000 acres of lands zoned for residential development.