Results 3,381-3,400 of 4,350 for speaker:Bobby Aylward

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Was it an asset report then?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Was it exclusively on zoned residential land 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) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: NAMA gave the University of Ulster €20,000 to compile this report. It must have put emphasis on it. When the report was produced, did it change the minds of board members on the loan portfolio? Did it have any bearing on the sale of the loan book afterwards-----

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: -----or was it just hidden or thrown on a shelf?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Mr. Rowntree made an assessment of the information put before him while Mr. Cushnahan was sitting in on the same meetings. Does Mr. Soffe accept that there could have been conflict of evidence? Mr. Rowntree and Mr. Cushnahan were both external members of the board and Mr. Rowntree has stated to the committee that it was easy to identify assets and individual debtors from the information....

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Mr. Rowntree did not say that. He said information had been circulated and taken back during the meetings and that he had information from those meetings that he would not normally have had which he could have carried out of the room if he had wanted to do so but that it had been taken from him. Mr. Cushnahan was in the same position. This means that a conflict of interest is highlighted...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: I will leave it at that, but I take a different meaning from Mr. Rowntree's comments last week. The Comptroller and Auditor General referred to the expected cash from debtors and loan workout value and said that if NAMA had held these loans, it was estimated that it would receive a net £1.68 billion in cash from the Project Eagle debtors between 2014 and 2020. This relates to selling...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: But the board did not conduct an asset assessment of the entire portfolio.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Do the witnesses have no doubt, therefore, that this was the best deal they could have secured up to 2020?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: I have another question. Mr. Soffe said in his opening statement, "... given the recent history of this island, it would have been unthinkable for NAMA to have ignored the impact of its actions on the Northern Ireland economy and on North-South relations", for political reasons and so forth. However, NAMA sold the portfolio to a private consortium, Cerberus. Once it was sold, NAMA had no...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Does the witness have no worries about Cerberus holding this-----

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: I hear that in the South when NAMA was involved there was some room for companies or private individuals, but now that Cerberus is involved it is coming to them with a heavy hand and is ignoring all of their pleas. Cerberus is there to make money and get out the door. Regardless of the way it makes it, it will make it and that is it.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Some of the individuals at the end of the stick might not agree with that.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: I will ask my last question. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, there were eight or nine companies approached and in the end there were two or three. Eight other companies were refused entry. Why were they not left in the race to bid?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: The witnesses mentioned that there were eight or nine companies. That number dwindled down to Cerberus and Fortress Investment Group when PIMCO was gone. Eight other companies were not left in the race. Why were they excluded when they wanted to get into it? That is according to Comptroller and Auditor General's report.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: The report says they were refused entry. "Refused" means they were not even allowed in to bid. I am asking why they were refused entry and excluded.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Seen by whom to be able to write the cheque?

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: Perhaps that is the reason we will have three inquiries going on. Following on from Deputy Catherine Murphy's point regarding the relationship between NAMA and the debtors in Northern Ireland, it was stated that the relationship was poor and deteriorating all of the time. Some 50% of the loan book was in Northern Ireland. What percentage of that figure related to non-performing loans? I...

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: As already stated, 50% of NAMA's portfolio was in Northern Ireland. I understand that 20% of its portfolio was in Britain, 7% was in southern Ireland and 8% was spread throughout the world and so on. I am talking about Northern Ireland and the political considerations and so on at the time.

Public Accounts Committee: Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed) (18 Oct 2016)

Bobby Aylward: But the assets might not necessarily have been in Northern Ireland. They could have been located outside Northern Ireland.