Clydesdale Bank’s owner is to sell a £625million portfolio of mostly non-performing UK commercial property loans.
They will be snapped up by an affiliate of private-equity firm Cerberus Global Investors.
National Australia Bank (NAB), which also owns Yorkshire Bank, declined to disclose the sale price but said the move would generate a small gain above net book value and release about £127million pounds in capital for the group.
NAB has seen its UK business drag on earnings in the past few years, although a restructure – resulting in hefty cost-cutting and around 1,400 job losses – has led to a recent turnaround.
Speculation persists that the group aims to sell its Clydesdale and Yorkshire operations.
The loan sale announced yesterday includes deals which are either in default, passed maturity or nearing maturity.
It will cut NAB’s gross loans balance of its UK commercial property portfolio by one-fifth to £2.38billion and impaired loans by nearly half.
NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn said: “While pleased with the acceleration of the run-off in the NAB UK CRE (commercial real estate) portfolio, our broader UK operations still face some challenges.”
