JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co and Lone Star Funds won the bidding for Anglo Irish Bank Corp's $9.65 billion portfolio of US real estate loans, according to three people briefed on the auction's results.
JPMorgan and Wells Fargo each won pools of mainly performing loans, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the results haven't been made public. Lone Star, the Dallas-based investor in distressed mortgages, will buy subperforming and nonperforming loans that account for about half of the portfolio, the person said.
The auction, which included loans backed by buildings from Manhattan to Beverly Hills, California, underscores the appetite for property in higher-quality locations by private-equity firms and banks seeking to expand their assets. The winning bids for the loans averaged about 80 cents on the dollar, said two of the people who were told of the results.
"If you're looking at quality assets in good, strong markets, I'd say 80 cents on the dollar sounds pretty reasonable," said Tom Craig, founder of TSC Realty Partners, a commercial-property broker in Seattle who wasn't involved in the sale. "One of the barriers to entry on a big deal like this is how many people can put the capital together to buy this and close quickly."
BLACKSTONE BID
Justin Perras, a spokesman for JPMorgan in New York, and Alan Elias, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, declined to comment, as did Andy Brimmer, a spokesman for Lone Star. Martha Kavanagh, a spokeswoman for Anglo Irish in Dublin, also declined to comment.
A message for Martha Wallau, a spokeswoman for Eastdil Secured LLC, the Wells Fargo unit that conducted the auction, wasn't returned.
Blackstone Group LP was a final bidder for at least a portion of the loans, according to reliable sources.