DEREK QUINLAN, the former tax inspector who brokered some of the biggest Irish and UK property deals of the boom, fully or partly owns about 50 properties in Ireland, Europe and the US. Not only did he arrange many of the deals – earning substantial fees in the process – he used his earnings to participate personally in the deals as an investor. Some of those assets are controlled by Avestus Capital, the Dublin firm that until recently bore his name, Quinlan Private.
Like many investors who plunged into the boom- time property market, Quinlan has substantial assets and many so-called “trophy” properties, but he also has borrowings of around €600 million, drawn to pay for them. About half of these debts is owed to State-owned Anglo Irish Bank, but he also has drawn substantial borrowings from Bank of Scotland (Ireland), AIB, Bank of Ireland, Barclays and the part-nationalised UK lender RBS. He was one of the first 10 debtors to be taken into Nama.
Among his investments are the Citibank tower in London’s Canary Wharf, the headquarters of Spanish banking giant Santander in Spain, a shareholding in the Maybourne Hotel Group – the five-star chain behind the Connaught, the Berkeley and Claridge’s in London – and shares in the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin. He was an investor in the ill-fated Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, Dublin 4, bought in 2006 for €412 million, now worth about €50 million.
Quinlan owns several properties in Dublin apart from the three in Shrewsbury Road, and a villa in Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. He has been living in rented accommodation in Switzerland – a country he chose to move to for privacy reasons and to ensure that any cash generated from asset sales could be freed to repay his substantial debts.
