Results 22,321-22,340 of 34,729 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Brown Rudnick did not have access to the data room and Mr. Neporent is saying that is the principal reason Cerberus did not have to inform NAMA of it.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Everybody has asked about the service Brown Rudnick was offering to Cerberus, and the cost. How Cerberus spent its £15 million is its affair but there is one sentence I am intrigued by and Mr. Neporent has given a reason in paragraph 3.15 of his opening statement in which he states: “Brown Rudnick also told Cerberus that if Cerberus did not wish to enter into this arrangement, it...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: It might be one of the most valuable reasons because Cerberus did not want to have another bidder with an advantage that it did not have. That in itself was unquantifiable but a big issue.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Cerberus said it was not sure what it would get for the £15 million but it could not take the risk of him going to somebody else. That was a big factor.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: That has not been teased out so far. Does Mr. Neporent accept that was a factor?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Brown Rudnick made it clear that it had put approximately a year’s work into this going back to when it started with PIMCO. PIMCO told us in its letter to the committee, and Mr. Neporent need not be expected to know this, that in April 2013 it was approached by Mr. Keenan, a partner in Brown Rudnick. To be pragmatic, quite a bit of work had to be done by some people before they got...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Neporent mentioned in paragraph 2.1 of his opening statement that Cerberus had an “unpaid principal balance, or UPB, of over $80 billion USD.” I presume the unpaid balance on Project Eagle was in the region of $5 billion.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Yes, approximately $5 billion. Although this was Cerberus’s first involvement here it must have been one of its biggest transactions. It did 40 transactions at $80 billion, that is an average of $2 billion each and this one is coming in at approximately $5 billion. This would be quite a big transaction, not the biggest I am sure, or maybe it was.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: That is big by Cerberus’ standards.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: The fact that it was a cash only bid meant that Cerberus had to be in a position to write that cheque. How did that play out? Would Mr. Neporent have wished Cerberus could have syndicated or drawn other people in to make up the funding?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: It was manageable by Cerberus.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Neporent says Cerberus is one of the biggest loan management companies in the world.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: There was a time NAMA was the biggest loan book repository on the planet. Mr. Neporent says Cerberus has taken over from NAMA in that league. Mr. Neporent has said he does not know who else was involved but did he feel Cerberus was in a competitive situation right to the end?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Why did the meeting with the Minister for Finance and the former Secretary of State, Cerberus’s chairman, officials, the chairman and chief executive of NAMA, and senior officials in the Department of Finance happen the night before the bids were lodged? Has that been disclosed to us before?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: The night before the bids closed. I am not sure. I do not remember too many witnesses telling us about that. Would it be unusual, for one of Cerberus's biggest bids, £1.3 billion, that the most senior people in the organisation would meet the most senior person in the organisation where it was lodging the bid the next day?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Was NAMA happy to meet with Cerberus the day before the bids closed?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: We will ask NAMA, not Cerberus, if it met Fortress, which we now know was the only other bidder in the field, within 24 hours of the bids closing. We will ask it about those two sets of meetings because I do not think that has been volunteered extensively to us.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: The letter Mr. Neporent mentioned on 25 March is a bit like what was called the memorandum of understanding which issued months earlier from Cerberus to the Minister. To which Minister was it addressed? Was it addressed to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: Was it addressed to any Minister in Northern Ireland?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (17 Nov 2016)

Seán Fleming: It was addressed to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, only. I might have a few other questions, but I wanted to put those points to Mr. Neporent.