Lone Star nears sale of most of Quintain Ireland property assets to TPG

Lone Star is close to agreeing to selling most of its Irish residential property development business, Quintain Ireland, to fellow Texas-based private-equity firm TPG.

The planned deal will include the Quintain Ireland platform and its land holdings in Adamstown, Clonburris and Portmarnock in Dublin, which have a combined capacity to deliver 4,500 houses, according to sources, confirming a report from international property news publication Green Street News.

However, it will exclude Quintain Ireland’s interests in Cherrywood, south Dublin, which will ultimately deliver 3,000 homes. Quintain Ireland will continue to manage the development of the Cherrywood land for Lone Star.

TPG is on track to pay more than €200 million for the Quintain Ireland platform and land it is acquiring.

Spokesmen for Lone Star and Quintain Ireland declined to comment.

Quintain Ireland was initially set up with property industry veterans Eddie Byrne and Michael Hynes as joint managing directors.

However, Mr Byrne left the business late last year and subsequently became chief executive of Ires Reit, the Dublin-listed apartments owner.

Lone Star’s funds were among the initial wave of overseas investors to buy Irish property assets following the property crash, accumulating some hundreds of acres of land in Dublin in the process.

The US private-equity giant planned in 2018 to roll a number of Dublin development projects into a new publicly quoted company. However, it decided that November to postpone an initial public offering (IPO) after equity markets turned volatile.

[ Lone Star’s Start Mortgages completes transfer of €2bn of loans to Mars Capital ]

It decided a year later to abandon an IPO altogether and roll its massive Irish residential land bank into a new Irish arm of its UK development business, Quintain.

Lone Star hired Rothschild and Savills to undertake a strategic review of Quintain Ireland, the third-largest homes developer in the Republic after publicly-quoted Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties, earlier this year.

TPG, cofounded by David Bonderman, a former chairman of Ryanair, was known for some months to have been circling Quintain Ireland. However, the shape of the ultimate deal being envisaged has only now emerged.

TPG is said to be keen to acquire further sites and develop the Quintain Ireland platform further, following a rebranding of the business after a deal goes through, subject to competition approval.

Cairn Homes and Glenveagh each published trading statements in recent days. Cairn said on Wednesday it closed 894 unit sales, generating revenue of €365 million, in the first half of 2024, a 66 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue. Its closed and forward order book has increased to about 3,100 new homes with a net sales value of nearly €1.2 billion.

Glenveagh Properties said on Thursday it remained on track to meet its building targets this year despite reporting a fall-off in earnings. It has closed 800 units of its 2,700 full-year target for 2024.

Revenue for the six months to the end of June, however, dropped to €150 million, down from €172 million for the same period last year.