Full coverage: Cerberus

2020 was a mixed bag for the US vulture fund, with collections and valuations slowing down at some of the SPVs used to buy distressed loans here. Initial figures for 2021 show a clear bounce.

The Dublin vehicle established by Cerberus to digest property-backed debt with a face value of £1.4 billion in Northern Ireland has come to the end of its life, revealing how much profit the US vulture fund has drawn from the deal.

Since the €24m write-down of former Ulster Bank loans in August, accounts trickling in from the US vulture fund’s Irish subsidiaries had shown poor performance in 2020. Until now. This is the story of how Cerberus made a comeback.

Since the start of the pandemic, the US vulture fund has written down millions off the value of bad loans acquired from AIB in Northern Ireland – but reported no Covid-19 impact on its latest Irish-owned Spanish landlord business.

Pandemic-hit debt collections have forced the US vulture fund to renegotiate some of its own loans with Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. The worst cases to date have a common denominator: Ulster Bank.

Cerberus has been one of the most active vulture funds in Ireland since the financial crash. But with Covid impacting debt collections, a key Irish subsidiary has been deep in talks with Deutsch Bank over a debt extension.

Irish brass-plate companies have become a central plank in the structures used by vulture funds to swoop in on Mediterranean distressed debt. An investigation into Cerberus reveals how this extends to dealings in tens of thousands of foreclosed properties.

For the past four years, vehicles established in Ireland to hoover up debt secured on Irish property have been banned from paying tax-free profit-participating interest. New accounts show how this rule has applied to portfolios sold by Nama and Ulster Bank.

In a major report, we investigate the vulture fund's 52 Irish companies to unveil the property deals, the profits and the tax bills. Using Ireland as a base for aggressive European distressed debt deals, it is also moving into property development in Dublin.

To understand how vulture fund Cerberus manages billions of euros’ worth of Irish assets, you must look to Baarn, a small town 45 minutes away from Amsterdam. From there, you will see just how the fund is managing to flatline its tax bill, a two-month investigation by The Currency can reveal.