NAMA CHIEF FRANK DALY has warned that reinforcement action may be taken against 11 of the top 30 debtors on the agency’s books.
Loans from top 30 debtors account for 40 per cent – or around €27bn – of all of NAMA’s acquired loans.
Speaking at the AGM of the Licensed Vintners Association yesterday, Daly said that NAMA’s main objective is to “generate a commercial return for the taxpayer over time” and that action may now be taken against those developers who are “making little effort to progress matters and have not yet adapted to the new realities some three and a half years after the property market collapsed”.
Daly said that debtors have to play their part in meeting NAMA’s debtor’s business plan review deadlines by submitting the information on time:
We are having to put pressure on some debtors to actively engage in this work. I find it surprising that we should have to be doing this – enlightened self-interest on the part of the debtors should have been enough of a driver.
Loans from over 140 debtors will be directly managed by NAMA staff once the review of their plans has been undertaken.
He said NAMA has already approved receivers in 41 cases, but the agency prefers a “consensual” arrangement with debtors which “depends on the debtor having the correct attitude and being open and transparent with us so we can work with them”.
The NAMA chairman said that recent sales had demonstrated that a property market still exists, but only if prices are adjusted:
There seems to be a residual sense that if potential sellers wait around for a few years, the market will improve; paradoxically, the only way that the market can be lifted out of its current stagnation is by generating transactions at whatever prices buyers are currently willing to pay.
Hotel sector
Daly said that NAMA has acquired loans from 83 hotels – 30 in Dublin, 24 in other parts of Leinster, 17 in Munster, 9 in Connaught and 3 in Ulster.
Responding to concerns of the oversupply of hotel rooms in Ireland, Daly said that although NAMA owns 83 hotel loans, it has no intention either to get involved in the management of those hotels “longer than necessary” or in supporting “so-called zombie hotels”.
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