{"id":341849,"date":"2026-03-12T05:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T05:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341849\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T05:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T05:49:11","slug":"bawag-talks-to-buy-finance-ireland-end-without-deal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341849\/","title":{"rendered":"Bawag talks to buy Finance Ireland end without deal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austrian banking group Bawag <\/a>has ended talks to buy nonbank lender Finance Ireland without a deal, according to sources. The development comes as the Vienna-based group is known to be continuing to pursue PTSB, the 57 per cent State-owned bank. <\/p>\n

The reasons for the breakdown in talks between Bawag and the owners of Finance Ireland<\/a>, led by US investment group Pimco, are not clear. <\/p>\n

Spokesmen for Finance Ireland and Pimco declined to comment, while representatives for Bawag <\/a>did not respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n

Online publication the Currency first reported in January that Bawag was in exclusive negotiations to purchase Finance Ireland<\/a>, a provider of car, commercial property, agri and small-business loans, for between \u20ac250 million and \u20ac300 million. <\/p>\n

PTSB had previously made a takeover approach for Finance Ireland in late 2024 to reduce its dependence on income from mortgage lending<\/a>, The Irish Times reported last April. Sources said at the time that PTSB remained interested in doing a deal. <\/p>\n

PTSB chief executive Eamonn Crowley described Finance Ireland as \u201ca fine business\u201d when asked by reporters on the approach last May, but declined to be drawn further.<\/p>\n

The overtures had gone nowhere by the time PTSB put itself up for sale in October. The market value bank has since jumped by a third to \u20ac1.7 billion. <\/p>\n

Sources said last month that PTSB is targeting late March for second-round takeover offers, with Bawag<\/a> and New York investment firm Centerbridge Partners among parties still circling the State-controlled bank.<\/p>\n

Lone Star, the Texas-based private equity giant led by Irish passport holder John Grayken, is also among those that committed resources to assessing a PTSB offer. Goldman Sachs<\/a> is running the sale process for PTSB.<\/p>\n

Finance Ireland was set up in 2002 by Billy Kane, a former chief executive of PTSB\u2019s precursor, Irish Permanent. It had \u20ac1.2 billion of car, commercial property, agri and small-business loans at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Over a billion eyeballs will be on the parade\u2019: St Patrick\u2019s festival chief executive Richard Tierney<\/p>\n

The business is 51 per cent-owned by Pimco<\/a>. London-based investment company M&G<\/a> owns almost 40 per cent, with the remainder held by management.<\/p>\n

The largest nonbank lender in the Republic revealed last March it had decided to stop mortgage lending, having effectively been out of this market in recent years.<\/p>\n

A takeover by a bank would have given Finance Ireland access to cheaper sources of funding. Unlike banks, which mainly fund their loan books through cheap deposits, non-banks are reliant on wholesale and capital markets, where rates have spiked in recent years as central banks hiked official borrowing costs to rein in inflation.<\/p>\n

While the European Central Bank (ECB) cut its key deposit rate from 4 per cent to 2 per cent in the 13 months to last June, there is mounting speculation that its next move may be upwards. <\/p>\n

ECB governing council member Madis Muller said on Tuesday the chances of a hike have risen of late, but that officials shouldn\u2019t react hastily to the war in Iran and its implications for inflation. <\/p>\n

Finance Ireland reported last May that its pretax profit jumped 95 per cent last year to \u20ac20.3 million as lending grew and funding costs for the sector declined. Kane said at the time that the group had a \u201cstrong start\u201d to 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austrian banking group Bawag has ended talks to buy nonbank lender Finance Ireland without a deal, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[123505,61,60,43,8580],"class_list":["post-341849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-finance-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-ptsb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}