Full coverage: Debt

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.

A husband and wife stopped paying their mortgage in 2017. Instead, deploying a playbook devised by so-called “charlatans” and “fraudsters”, they made 27 arguments as to why they should not have to pay the money. The result? A repossession order.

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.

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.

Tech entrepreneur Barry Napier had a side business in pubs and restaurants. When that failed, his bankers went after his most precious asset – his shares in Cubic Telecom.

Cable and Wireless has just placed its Dublin subsidiary into liquidation. With no employees, the special-purpose vehicle had raised bonds worth $1.4 billion to fund communication networks across the Americas.

Ronan Horgan wants to triple the size of Capitalflow, and export the business model of his non-bank lender into Europe. He talks about disrupting the banks, the nuances of business lending and the impact of Covid-19 on his loan book.

Ireland has become a global platform for multinationals to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions under the form of interest. The resumption of international tax talks following Joe Biden’s election will put this role into question.

Under pressure from a phase two CCPC investigation and changing market conditions, Link Group has pulled out of its deal to acquire Pepper European Servicing one year after it was first announced.

Over the past decade, the New York-headquartered global marketing intelligence giant used Irish companies to funnel multi-billion intercompany loans to its US business. The three Dublin-based vehicles have just gone into liquidation – but what have they achieved?