AMERICAN BILLIONAIRE investor Wilbur Ross has claimed his consortium – which last week was named the preferred bidder to buy the state owned EBS – will complete the takeover of the building society “in the next few months.”

The consortium led by Cardinal Capital Group, and heavily funded by Ross, was named on Thursday last week as the winning bidder – beating Irish Life & Permanent – to take over the building society which was nationalised by the state last year.

Speaking on CNBC, Ross said the deal could be completed relatively quickly – and gave the outgoing government his blessing, saying it had acted “very aggressively” to solve the crisis that had engulfed EBS and the banking sector as a whole.

There would be more discussions to take place between himself and the other investors, he said, ahead of a “definitive agreement.”

Among the individual matters to be discussed between Ross, Cardinal and other investors – including the Carlyle Group – would be whether to float EBS on the stock exchange, and its projected value of that was done.

It must also decide how to compensate the state for stepping in to buy the institution; it could choose either to offer a guaranteed percentage of EBS’s profits for the coming years, or instead offer it an ownership stake in the bank.

He further added that the Irish recovery would be “V-shaped… as opposed to the wobbly things that may happen elsewhere in Europe.”

That recovery, he said, would take about another year.

The Irish Times, offering background on Ross’s investments, says Ross bought Bank United – another collapsed entity, which had fallen during the 2008 crisis – for around $900m.

Last month Ross floated 30 per cent of the bank on the New York Stock Exchange with current share prices valuing the bank at $2.75 billion, a handsome profit.