NAMA TO BENEFIT FROM €19.5m SALE OF KNIGHTSBROOK GOLF RESORT - NAMA is set to benefit from the near €20 million sale of Knightsbrook hotel and golf course to a group of Irish investors backed by the specialist lender Fairfield Real Estate Finance.
A group of private Irish investors has bought the resort, in Trim, Co Meath, for €19.5 million, €1.5 million more than the price sought when the Cushman & Wakefield agency put the hotel on the market, in April. NAMA, the State assets agency, will benefit from the deal as it took over a loan, originally due to AIB, that was secured on the property and the business, says the Irish Times. Accounts for the Knightsbrook hotel and golf-course companies show that they had discussed repayment of the debt with NAMA in recent years. The agency would not comment on Monday. Knightsbrook Hotel and Golf Resort Ltd’s figures show that it was profitable in 2015 but that its assets still fell €1 million short of its liabilities. Knightsbrook Hotel Spa & Golf Resort is part of the family-owned Cusack Hotel Group, which also includes the Castle Arch Hotel, which is also in Trim, and the Ardboyne and Newgrange Hotels, both in Navan.
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KENNEDY WILSON COMPLETES OFFICE LETTINGS AT CAPITAL DOCK - US-headquartered real estate giant Kennedy Wilson has signed up global recruitment group Indeed as a tenant at its Capital Dock development in Dublin's docklands.
The deal will see Indeed occupy the entirety of buildings 100 and 300 Capital Dock on a 20-year lease. All told, the company's operations at the docklands campus will extend across some 216,000 sq ft. Kennedy Wilson's agreement of the lease with Indeed follows the announcement earlier this year of its forward-funding sale agreement of the 130,000 sq ft 200 Capital Dock building to US investment bank JP Morgan, says the Irish Independent. With tenancies now agreed for all 346,000 sq ft of office space at Capital Dock, Kennedy Wilson said yesterday that it would commence the pre-marketing of the dockland scheme's 190 apartments in the second quarter of 2018. Mary Ricks, president and CEO of Kennedy Wilson Europe said that Indeed's decision to rent two entire blocks at Capital Dock represented the largest office lease completed in the current cycle in Dublin. Describing it as a "milestone signing", Ms Ricks noted that Capital Dock's offices were now fully-leased more than 12 months before completion.
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TOYS 'R' US LIKELY TO CLOSE BELFAST AND DERRY STORES - Stores in the North are likely to be casualties of Toys 'R' Us plans to close 26 stores in Britain and the North as part of its bankruptcy restructuring in the US.
The firm said its stores in Belfast and Derry will "likely" close in the spring of 2018 but that it intended to keep open its stores in Sprucefield in Co Down and Belfast Castle Court, writes the Irish Examiner. In relation to Sprucefield and Belfast Castle Court, Toys R Us said it was "reviewing options including downsizing the stores or rent reductions". The 26 closures, starting next spring, will pare rents on warehouse-size stores and let the company focus on better-performing small shops and online operations. The UK arm will pursue a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), a type of court-led insolvency proceeding. Warehouse stores "are too big and expensive to run in the current retail environment", UK managing director Steve Knights said. "The business has been loss-making in recent years and so we need to take strong and decisive action to accelerate the transformation," he added.
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INVESTORS FACE TESTING TIME NEXT YEAR AS $1 TRILLION OF DEBT REDEMPTIONS ROLLS IN - A $1 trillion wave of fixed-income debt is set to mature in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the coming year, posing a significant challenge for investors searching for returns, according to new research.
The debt was raised by investment-grade companies, sovereigns and financial institutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis, when bond yields were much higher than they are now, writes the Financial Times. More than half of the redemptions will be bonds issued by financial institutions, according to research by the bank MUFG, with nearly a third coming from corporate issuers and the remainder from sovereigns and related entities. The bonds have delivered attractive total returns to investors, who now face a less appealing environment for putting their money to work and will probably demand higher fixed rates from borrowers looking to refinance. The Bank of America Merrill Lynch global high-yield index yielded over 8% when the wave of debt-raising began in 2012. It is now returning around 5.3%. The $1 trillion set to mature next year is the first in what is likely to be several years of similarly sized waves of redemptions, according to Anthony Barklam, MUFG’s co-head of debt capital markets bonds and loans.
