NAMA Gets Tough With Indebted Developers

High-rolling developers, brothers Ray and Danny Grehan, have been given until Tuesday evening to respond to a demand for payment from NAMA, or receivers will be re-appointed to their company and personal assets.

NAMA appointed receivers last Wednesday to the Glenkerrin Group and Irish properties owned by the Grehans in a bid to recover a €650 million debt owed to the State.

But the receivers were stood down at midnight on Friday, after a request from the Grehans for more time to deal with NAMA's request for payment.

NAMA is the agency set up by the last Irish government to take over the toxic property related loans on the books of Ireland's main banks.

It is now pursuing the holders of all these loans in a bid to recoup as much of money as possible.

NAMA normally appoints a receiver when it has failed to agree a business plan with developers on how they intend to meet debt repayments.

It's believed the Grehans had agreed such a plan with NAMA last December, but they did not meet some of the terms agreed, and NAMA decided to move against them.

The move to appoint a receiver to Glenkerrin caught the developers by surprise as they had been negotiating finance with NAMA to complete an extension on a Crowne Plaza Hotel they own in Shoreditch, London.

"We were surprised by the aggressive move by Nama because we were finishing out an extension on a hotel in the UK and we had a buyer for the hotel," said Ray Grehan.

He said the market in the UK was still strong, and he was hopeful that Glenkerrin could repay NAMA the amount of money it paid to the banks for their loans.

The properties involved in the €650m debts include the site of the UCD veterinary college in Ballsbridge, Dublin, which Glenkerrin bought for €171.5m in 2005.

At the time the site was the most expensive per acre in the history of the State.

Glenkerrin also developed The Grange, a high profile apartment complex in Stillorgin, south Dublin and the Glenroyal Hotel in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

NAMA said it would reappoint two receivers from Grant Thornton on Tuesday evening if no progress was made.

The Grehans are the just the latest in a series of high-profile developers against whom NAMA has moved in recent weeks.

It also appointed agents to take charge of dozens of companies controlled by property tycoons Derek Quinlan, Jim Mansfield and Liam Kelly.