DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's "bad bank" will examine whether it should be wound down rapidly or hold onto its assets far longer than planned as part of a state-commissioned review, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said on Tuesday.
The government has asked the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the so-called bad bank and one of the world's largest property groups after purging Irish banks of 74 billion euros (60.9 billion pounds) of risky loans, if it can offload its assets ahead of a 2020 deadline.
The request came on the back of a surge in international interest in Irish assets that saw liquidators for Irish Bank Resolution Corporation - the wind down vehicle for the failed Anglo Irish Bank - recently sell over 90 percent of a loan book with a par value of 21.7 billion euros.
Noonan gave further details of the review in parliament on Tuesday, including whether it would be prudent for NAMA to hang on to the assets for another decade in the hope that property prices keep rising following a spectacular crash six years ago.
"I've asked them, for example, what would be the consequences of at the end of 2015 taking the whole residual NAMA book and doing what IBRC did, sell it all off in a six month period," Noonan said.
"I've asked them as well to look at if you had a 17 or 18 billion (euros) of a residual book and you divide it into three thirds and you were to timeline it and sell it that way, how would that work out?"
"I've other people then looking at do you sell quick and have very little upside or do you hold out hoping that property values go up so that there's a bigger return to the Irish taxpayer in 2025."
Noonan added that another major consideration would be the impact of a quick wind down on the country's banks which hold the debt supporting NAMA on their balance sheets, a particular drag for state-owned Allied Irish Banks 46:ALBK which held 15.6 billion euros of the low-yielding bond at the end of last year.
Noonan said that rather than waiting a decade for the values of NAMA's holdings to rise, the government could instead "get our upside" when it sold its 99 percent stake in an Allied Irish Banks enhanced by the redemption of its NAMA bonds.
Seen as a major liability to Dublin's finances until quite recently, NAMA is now eyeing a profit on the 32 billion euros it paid the banks for their loans and has already begun speeding up it sales to take advantage of the pickup in demand.
When asked about the review in February, NAMA's chairman said it was highly unlikely the agency would still be around by 2020. Noonan said on Tuesday that he had not made his mind made up about NAMA's future.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)