Siac’s €1.1m profit over €19m toll sale to Dutch investment fund

Building group Siac will confirm it made a €1.1 million profit from the sale of its share in a high-profile toll road to a Dutch investment fund for a total of €19 million.

Recently filed accounts for the group show that it lost €83 million in 2012, a year before problems with roadbuilding contracts in Poland forced it to seek High Court protection from its creditors and the appointment of an examiner.

A directors' report accompanying the figures, which cover 2012, confirm that it sold its interest in Eurolink Motorway Operation Ltd for €19 million to Dutch Infrastructure Fund, a Netherlands-based specialist investor. It is shortly due to file results showing that the deal earned it a €1.1 million profit.

The accounts also show that buyer took over a €6.8 million loan to the building company from the motorway operator, which was unsecured.

Eurolink Motorway operates the tolled stretch of the M3 that runs from Clonee past Kells in Co Meath. The development angered environmentalists as it passed close to the Hill of Tara and other sites said to be historically important.

The other partners included Spanish road building and engineering and infrastructure specialists Ferrovial and Cintra.

Siac sold its interest in 2013 as it was facing increasing financial pressure resulting from losses sustained on a road building project in Poland that became mired in dispute.

It is taking legal action against the Polish roads authority, claiming breach of contract among other things. It is one of a number of Irish and European companies which have complained to the European Commission about Poland.

Siac emerged from examinership a year ago after the High Court approved a rescue plan agreed with creditors that saw a number of them take significant reductions in the amounts due to them.

Poland joint venture Accounts for 2012 show Siac’s operations generated a profit of €423,000. However, a loss of €13.5 million from its joint venture in Poland, and a €70 million exceptional charge and writedown in the value of its assets, left it with losses of €83 million.

The company’s balance sheet shows it ended the year €44.8 million in the red, largely due to bank debts of €57.2 million and its total liabilities were more than €62 million.

Its lenders took control of the property interests as part of last year’s reorganisation, which resulted from the examinership. They subsequently placed some of the assets up for sale.

That element of the rescue plan meant that Siac had a clean balance sheet once its examinership ended in February 2014. Most of the bank debt was connected to its property ventures which its lenders took over at the end of the process.

It reported that it had returned to profit several months later. Examinership is a court- supervised corporate rescue mechanism that gives troubled companies up to three months protection from their creditors and allows them to put together a rescue plan.