It has been a helter-skelter 18 months for Pepper Ireland, the loan servicing and finance house that employs nearly 500 people across Dublin and Shannon. For a start, it was ditched at the altar. In February of this year, some 12-months after the Australian finance giant the Link Group first agreed a €200 million deal to acquire the Irish arm of the business, it backed out of the transaction. The collapse of the deal was welcomed by consumer advocates, who objected strongly to Link increasing its Irish presence. For Pepper, owned by the private equity giant KKR, it represented both…