The price is about half the €250m previous owner Oaktree paid Nama for the shopping centre in 2018, but better than had been touted earlier this year.
Shane Scully’s Eagle Street Partners, which owned a number of investment properties in the UK and Ireland, is the buyer, according to The Irish Times, which first reported the sale.
The acquisition included control of 118 of The Square’s 160 shop units, a cinema with 13 digital screens, and more than 2,400 car spaces.
The centre is anchored by Dunnes Stores and Tesco. Penneys opened a large shop in the centre two years ago.
Extending to 53,603 sqm (577,500 sqft), The Square is located on a site of 27 acres.
Sources confirmed that a sale has been agreed and is on course to close within days. AIB as senior lender will be the main beneficiary of the sale. The process is being run by high-profile accountants Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson of Interpath Advisory, who were appointed by AIB as joint receivers and managers, with the consent and co-operation of Oaktree Capital Management in May.
The move by the bank follows a stalled sales process.
The day-to-day operations of the shopping centre – which was Ireland’s biggest mall when it opened in 1990 – have not been affected by the process. Owners of the independently owned units at the centre will not be impacted by the receivership.
The move by AIB came after Oaktree put The Square on the market last year, with a €170m price tag. However they failed to land a deal at that price.
While Oaktree paid Nama €250m for the shopping centre in 2018, that was already less than half the €640m valuation the scheme carried in 2007 – when financier Derek Quinlan’s Quinlan Private sold a stake of around 51pc to developer Noel Smyth for €320m.
Oaktree’s 2018 purchase was backed by AIB as senior lender, with additional lending coming from UK lender M&G Investments.
Prior to the Oaktree sale, Nama had acquired and amalgamated various borrowers’ interests in what had been a highly fractured ownership in order to execute a single large-scale disposal.
Oaktree is the second US investment giant to have been burned on a major retail investment here bought after the last crash.
Blackstone bought the bigger Blanchardstown Centre shopping complex for €950m from Stephen Vernon’s Green Property in 2016 but ended up walking away from the retail asset as values plummeted during the Covid pandemic.
