IRISH BANKS, LED by the Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC) and the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) are expected to sell on around €15 billion worth of loans this year, PwC Ireland has said.

PwC Ireland partner Aidan Walsh said:

“We expect that over €15 billion of loans will be transacted in the Irish market. While the majority of this will come from IBRC and NAMA, we see other banks continuing their deleveraging program over the coming year.”

He said that banks were eager to get loans off their balance sheets and restructure their operations, and that this process was likely to continue for at least another five years.

The findings of the European Asset Quality Reviews and stress tests may push more banks to try and offload loan books that will hurt their performance in these tests.

As with the recent disposal of the IBRC loan book, Walsh said that private equity giants will be most likely bidders for the loan books.

“Private equity and hedge funds were the most active buyers,” he noted.

“We expect that to continue in 2014 due to the significant amounts of investment funds raised and the availability of debt financing, especially for the more established players in the European market.”

PwC said that around €64 billion of European non-core loans were sold in 2013, with a further €80 billion expected this year.

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