Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Derek Quinlan:

Just to explain, Deputy, depending on how much ... you measure the return on an investment, on the amount of equity that is invested. So if you buy a property for €1 million and you invest €1 million in it so there is no borrowing and the property is producing, we will say, 7%, you're getting a 7% return on your €1 million. But if, in fact, you can gear that and put in half a million bank debt, which would be comfortable, assuming that the level that the interest rates were at the moment, then you are improving the return on your equity because after 12 months, if you sell the property, we'll say, for €1.1 million, then there is a much higher return on your equity because you have only €500,000 of equity in there. You're earning 20% on your equity in a year. So people in, not alone in property companies, publicly quoted companies, everybody uses bank debt to ... They need bank debt.

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