Sankaty, Cerberus win last RBS Northern Ireland debt

Sankaty Advisors and Cerberus Capital Management have won Royal Bank of Scotland’s last two portfolios of distressed Northern Irish commercial property loans.

Cerberus is paying £205m the portfolio of RBS’s subsidiary Ulster Bank’s loans in Northern Ireland, Project Rathlin, which has a face value of £1.4bn.

Sankaty, a US-based affiliate of Bain Capital,  has won Project Coney, a bundle of loans with an outstanding balance of €465m. It is believed to have paid close to the €187m market value of the properties involved.

The sale to Cerberus was “the final material transaction for RBS Capital Resolution (RCR) in Northern Ireland,” said RBS. RCR is Royal Bank of Scotland’s bad bank.  The sale would result in a loss of £5m after paying costs associated with the transaction, said RBS.

Assets in the portfolio include loans on the 16-acre Sirocco Works former shipyard and the Royal Exchange project, both in Belfast.

Ulster Bank’s Project Coney contains loans in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, including  66 pubs, 36 hotels, 23 commercial units and 56 development sites; two of the hotels are the five-star Monart Spa in County Wexford and the popular four-star Hotel Kilkenny in Kilkenny.