The Commercial Court has begun hearing a challenge by Treasury Holdings to the appointment by NAMA of receivers to certain property assets.
Senior Counsel Michael Cush for Treasury Holdings told the court that Treasury was challenging NAMA's decision on 8 December 2011 to call in Treasury's loans and its decision on 25 January this year to appoint receivers.
He said one of the main grounds of Treasury's challenge was an allegation that there had been an absence of fair procedures and that Treasury had had a right to be heard in advance of the making of those decisions.
Mr Cush said it was undoubtedly the case that Treasury was "balance sheet insolvent", that its liabilities significantly exceeded the value of its assets.
He said that was because of the extraordinary decline in the value of its Irish property assets.
He said NAMA had described Treasury as hopelessly and grossly insolvent.
That was true if the demands for repayment were valid he said.
But he also added that Treasury had continued to operate and was in the process of negotiating continuing terms under which NAMA would provide ongoing facilities to the company when NAMA made a decision to call in the loans.
He said Treasury did not accept that it had made an agreement with NAMA which precluded it from taking this action.
Mr Cush said two international investors had signalled that they were willing to improve their offers for the Treasury loans.
He said that Treasury was pursuing a strategy to allow it to exit NAMA.
Mr Cush also said that NAMA's decision of 8 December last year to call in the loans was not communicated to Treasury until 9 January.
He said that one month period would have given more than sufficient time for Treasury to make representations to NAMA. He said NAMA had been less than open and transparent with Treasury.
He said there was correspondence between NAMA and Treasury during that month but at no time did NAMA say they had decided to call in the loans and appoint receivers.
The case is expected to take at least four days.
