Full coverage: Debt

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?

From 1,000 cases in 2019, High Court debt enforcement actions by banks and vulture funds fell to fewer than 200 last year. Who is still suing borrowers in the middle of a pandemic, who is not – and what is coming next?

Two months into her new job as European Commissioner for Financial Services, Mairéad McGuinness is facing into a potential wave of debt defaults. She wants to see a more sensitive response than the past wholesale offloading of non-performing loans to overseas vulture funds.

Vehicles used by US vulture funds to purchase debt portfolios from KBC and the former ACC in the past two years have just filed accounts for the first time, channelling healthy tax-free income to their investors.

The Irish jewellery group Anthony Nicholas, owner of the Fields chain, paid off its senior debt after selling four UK stores. With Covid impacting its business heavily, it has adjusted its facilities.

Debt collector turned vulture fund Cabot Financial has been growing its Mediterranean business out of Dublin, illustrating the wider trend among US distressed debt investors to use Ireland as a base for European portfolio securitisation.

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.