'Business as usual' at Ashbourne Marriott despite Nama takeover

The Marriott Hotel in Ashbourne is one of the 15 properties with debts involving developer Paddy Kelly that have been taken over by the National Asset Management Agency (Nama). Kieran Wallace of KPMG has been appointed as statutory receiver to nine hotels and suites of rooms, while estate agent Savills has been appointed as 'property receiver' to a number of non-hotel assets. Mr Wallace has been given control of the Marriott in Ashbourne; the Days Inn in Talbot Street, Dublin; the Clarions in the IFSC, Dublin Airport, Liffey Valley and Limerick; and the Maldron in Citywest, Dublin. He has also taken control of suites at the Maldron Hotels in Cardiff Lane, Dublin, and Limerick city. Savills has taken over a number of other assets. Among them is the Smurfit Kappa head office in Clonskeagh, a land bank in Drimnagh and units in Smithfield, including shops operated by Paddy Power and Polonez. Savills is expected to seek to bring these properties to market in the near future. While property receivers are widely used in the UK, they are not common in Ireland. But Nama has chosen to go this route as they represent a potentially cheaper option to using traditional insolvency practitioners. Mr Wallace is expected to seek to sell the hotel assets at some point in the future. It is not clear if Nama will then pursue the borrowers for any shortfall between the sale price and the loan amounts. It is to be "business as usual" in the hotels in the meantime, he said, including the Ashbourne Marriott. Mr Wallace has been appointed to the hotels due to the complexity of the ownership issues involved. The loans are held by more than 100 borrowers who were part of syndicates put together by Mr Kelly to fund the developments. It is understood the loans relating to the Clarion and Maldron hotels amount to about €283 million. The Marriott is the second hotel in Ashbourne that Mr Wallace has become involved with in the past two months. In early February, he was appointed as receiver to Sanguinis, which owns the freehold on Ashbourne House Hotel. The hotel, which is run by a third party, is continuing to trade and is unaffected by the receivership.