Nama to shut down 16 years on from financial collapse
The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) in Ireland is dissolving after 16 years of managing property loans acquired during the 2009 financial crisis. The agency returned a final surplus of €5.6 billion to the state after overseeing a massive bank rescue operation.
Why it matters
NAMA's closure marks the end of a significant chapter in Ireland's post-financial crisis economic recovery and state intervention history.
The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) will be dissolved at midnight tonight, 16 years after it was set up to take over the property loans of the Irish banks.
The agency was established in December 2009 at the height of the financial collapse.
It bought loans from the banks which had a face value of €72.3 billion.
Controversially, it paid €31.8bn for the borrowings, a discount of 58% which left enormous holes in the balance sheets of the banks.
Those gaps were filled with capital injections of €40bn from the Irish taxpayer.
In addition to earlier recapitalisation payments, the total gross cost of the bank rescue came to €64bn for the Irish State.
NAMA, which returned a final surplus to the state of €5.6bn, was run by CEO Brendan McDonagh, who was on secondment from the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the body which manages the national debt.
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