PROJECT EAGLE COLLECTED OVER €1.5 BILLION LAST YEAR - New figures show that the US vulture fund that bought State assets agency NAMA's Northern Ireland property loans in a controversial deal had collected more than €1.5 billion from developers by the end of last year.
Promontoria Eagle, the company US fund Cerberus used to buy the loans for €1.6 billion, lost €19 million last year, according to annual returns it has just filed writes the Irish Times. Notes to the accounts state that Promontoria Eagle collected £215.9 million (€242 million) due from borrowers, mainly boom-era property developers, last year. Previous accounts show the Cerberus subsidiary had collected €1.29 billion up to the end of 2016, bringing the total by the end of last year to €1.53 billion. It valued the remaining debt due from the borrowers on December 31st 2017 at £47.3 million. Cerberus bought the loans, collectively called Project Eagle and worth around £4 billion, at a discount in April 2014 from Nama, giving it the right to seek the full repayment of the debts or take control of the properties against which they were secured. The deal is the subject of a police investigation in Northern Ireland and a judicial inquiry, chaired by retired High Court judge John Cooke, in the Republic. The Dáil's Public Accounts Committee also scrutinised the transaction two years ago.
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WHITEGATE REFINERY PROFITS PLUNGE BUT OWNERS PAID $55m DIVIDEND - The Canadian owners of Ireland's only oil refinery - Whitegate in Cork Harbour - were paid a $55m (€48.4m) dividend by the company behind the facility last year.
The payment was made just over a year after Irving Oil acquired the refinery. Accounts just filed for the Whitegate business, which revealed the dividend payment, also show that pre-tax profits at the refinery plunged last year by 80% to $14.3m (€12.6m), while turnover rose to $1.5 billion (€1.32 billion) from €1.3 billion in 2016, says the Irish Independent. "An improved risk mitigation strategy for commodity price risk, offset the impact of increased crude oil prices on gross margin," its directors said in the accounts. Irving, which during the summer bought Ireland's Top Oil, acquired the formerly State-owned Whitegate refinery in 2016 from Philips 66. Philips 66 said in its 2016 annual report that the net carrying value of the Whitegate assets at the time of the sale was $135m (€119m), which included $127m in inventory, other working capital and $8m of goodwill. Philips 66 said an "immaterial gain" was recognised on the sale to Irving Oil. Irving Oil, which is based in New Brunswick, is a privately-owned company that operates the largest refinery in Canada. The New Brunswick facility can process more than 320,000 barrels of oil a day.
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TTM HEALTHCARE REVENUES TOP €50m - Revenues at the Irish-owned international nursing recruitment firm TTM Healthcare topped the €50m mark for the first time last year, despite profits falling by nearly 13%.
Newly-filed accounts for the Ennis-based company show record revenues of €50.7m for the 11 months to the end of last December. However, pre-tax profits fell by 12.8% to €2.33m, says the Irish Examiner. TTM Healthcare is headed by former Irish boxing international and EY Entrepreneur of the Year award finalist Brian Crowley, who established the business in 2008 when he was aged just 25. The company employs 196 people across offices in Ennis, Dublin, London and Preston and places around 3,400 healthcare professionals in temporary roles and more than 1,300 in permanent jobs each year. In 2016, Irish private equity firm Broadlake took a 30% stake in the firm supporting the TTM group’s strategy to triple revenues and double the workforce over five years. The accounts show that TTM Healthcare last year paid out €450,000 and this followed €1.4m in dividends to its owners in 2016. The firm recorded post-tax profits of €2m after paying corporation tax of €267,428. Pay to key management personnel totalled €164,153 last year.
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LAVISH PAYDAY FOR KPMG PARTNERS AS REVENUES RISE DESPITE CARILLION DEBACLE - Big Four accountancy firm KPMG has reported revenues rising at their fastest rate for a decade in the UK, despite the blow to its reputation from the collapse of a major audit client Carillion in January.
The firm, which has faced fierce criticism from politicians and regulators for the quality of its audit work, managed an 8% rise in revenues to £2.3 billion in the year to September 30. Profits before tax and partner bonuses rose 53%. Excluding the proceeds of the sale of a building in Canary Wharf, profits were up 18%. This helped boost average pay per partner, which rose 15% to £601,000, says the Financial Times. Despite the pay increase, bonuses for partners still lagged those at the other Big Four firms. Deloitte's partners remained the best paid in the UK this year, although average pay fell slightly to £832,000. PwC partners received £712,000 on average, while those at EY received £693,000. KPMG's revenues are also smaller - PwC posted £3.8 billion of revenues this year, while Deloitte reported £3.6 billion and EY reported £2.4 billion. Bill Michael, KPMG’s UK chairman, said he was pleased with the latest results but "did not want to get complacent about the challenges we’ve got". The firm's financial performance will come as a relief following a series of reputational setbacks in the UK and overseas over the past 18 months.
