The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has approved the sales of assets totalling €6.2 billion, the Agency’s chief executive said today.

Speaking at an investor conference in London, Brendan McDonagh said asset sales totalling €4.3 billion had been approved between January and October 2011. This was in addition to sales approvals totalling €1.9 billion last year bringing overall approved sales to over €6 billion since March 2010.

Approximately 80% of the approved sales relate to assets located outside Ireland.

Mr McDonagh also said NAMA:

• was on course to make an operating profit of €600 million in 2011;
• had approved 63 insolvency appointments so far this year compared with 30 in 2010;
• was likely to redeem a cumulative total of €2 billion in NAMA senior debt before the end of 2011;
• had generated over €5 billion in gross cash receipts to the end of November 2011 and approved €950 million in new loans to complete development work in progress.

A large proportion of the sales proceeds will be used to pay down NAMA’s borrowings and help meet the Agency’s target of repaying 25% of its outstanding debts by the end of 2013.

“Our asset disposal programme will be orderly and phased to maximise the amount of money we can recover for the taxpayer from loans we have acquired,” said Mr McDonagh.

“NAMA will not hoard assets in the hope of generating speculative gains, nor will it engage in so-called fire-sales. We will seek to identify opportunities to make capital investment¹ combined with effective asset management with the objective of generating continuing cashflow while ensuring that we get the best price we can from each and every sale.”

¹ Mr McDonagh also said the €950 million credit facilities approved so far would be used to advance or complete work in progress on developments linked to NAMA loans

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