Lloyds Banking To Sell Irish Commercial Loans Portfolio For GBP 827 Mln

(RTTNews) - Lloyds Banking Group Plc. (LLOY.L, LYG) Thursday announced that it has agreed the sale of a portfolio of Irish commercial loans to a consortium for a cash consideration of approximately 827 million pounds.

The transaction is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The consortium comprises Ennis Property Finance Limited, an entity affiliated to Goldman Sachs, Feniton Property Finance Limited, an entity affiliated to CarVal, and Bank of Ireland.

The company said the gross assets subject to the transaction are about 2.6 billion pounds, of which 2.3 billion pounds were impaired. In the year 2014, these assets generated pre tax losses of about 130 million pounds.

Lloyds Banking will use the sale proceeds for general corporate purposes and the transaction is not expected to have a material impact on the Group but will be capital accretive by about 7 basis points.

The company said the sale is in line with its strategy of deleveraging its balance sheet by reducing run off assets and creating a low risk, UK focused bank.

Following this transaction, the Group will have minimal remaining exposure to commercial assets in Ireland.