Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Public Accounts Committee

Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed)

10:00 am

Mr. John Collison:

No. They claimed that a lot of this information was public. That the information that they had and they used was in the public domain. There was only so much information they could glean at that point so their offer was certainly very high level and subject to a lot more due diligence. They really were just teasing out the opportunity at that stage. They certainly were not able to put firm numbers behind it. It was only when agreement was reached to provide them with some limited information - I suppose to allow them firm up on that offer - that they were able to access what we provided at the time, which were redacted Red Book valuations on the top assets. The portfolio was very concentrated so a huge amount of value was in the top end of the portfolio, in a limited number of assets. They were provided with redacted valuation reports, which allowed them, I suppose which provided, the actual detail on the real estate. It provided details of the asset itself, a description, a location, the market, the rental level, whether it was in line with the market rental levels and they were able to, I suppose, assess and evaluate the value of those assets from that, and that is what resulted in their bid then coming forward on 4 December.