Thursday 20 October 2011

NAMA in debt talks with group of private hospitals

NAMA is in crucial debt talks with one of the country's largest private hospital groups which owns Dublin's Mount Carmel, St Joseph's of Sligo and Aut Even in Kilkenny.

Some of the loans taken out by the Mount Carmel Medical Group, backed by developer Gerald Conlan, have transferred into NAMA and discussions are described as being ongoing, with the hospital group trying to refinance the loans.

There is no certainty that these discussions with NAMA will be completed on a "commercially acceptable basis or at all',' states accounts for one of the firms which forms part of the Mount Carmel group.

The directors of the hospital group have cut costs and restructured the business and, with NAMA's support, all liabilities should be met as they fall due.

Defaulted

"The group has defaulted on certain of its bank facilities during the year ended December 31, 2009. The group is dependent on NAMA and its banks to continue to provide loan and working capital facilities and on the success of the group's restructuring plans and cost reduction initiatives,'' said state auditors to the subsidiary.

The group has debts with AIB and KBC and the loans with the former are likely to be the loans gone into NAMA. Security for the loans comes in different forms.

The life insurance policy of the chief shareholder in the company, Gerald Conlan, is among the items that have been assigned to the banks.

The last set of accounts for the main company show it made a loss of €48.6m during the year ended December 2008.

The main driver of the large losses was property and goodwill writedowns of €40m. On the plus side, the company continued to boost turnover.

The deficit in the shareholder's funds of the company came to €65.5m, a huge rise on the previous year.

Emmet Oliver, Deputy Business Editor
Irish Independent

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