Results 22,361-22,380 of 34,777 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: That was Brown Rudnick.

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: Can Mr. Neporent tell me generally, so that we can understand the process because we are not in the business, the range of advisers Cerberus would employ on an issue like this, apart from legal and accounting?

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: What does Mr. Neporent mean by servicing, for the lay person watching?

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: Would Cerberus employ insurance, planning or environmental advisers because it is taking on a lot of property? Did it do any of that?

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 are in the pre-bid situation. What happened afterwards is Cerberus’s affair. Did it employ any of those types of adviser? Other people have said they had insurance advisers and environmental consultants on board? Did Cerberus go that route?

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: Would Mr. Neporent send a note of that to the committee afterwards?

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: How many of those advisers was Cerberus required to notify NAMA of? Mr. Neporent says there were 16 but only a couple of those would have had access to the data room.

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: Were there any advisers hired by Cerberus who did not have access to the data room, who were notified to NAMA?

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.