A GLOBAL insurance company, XL Group Ltd, is planning to set up its registered office at the former Hibernian United Services Club on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green after agreeing to buy the listed building for €7.8 million. The sale is subject to securing planning permission for a change of use from gentlemen’s club to offices.
XL has its registered office at 1 Hatch Street after changing its domicile to Ireland from the Cayman Islands. It has a market value of $6.39 billion, operates in 27 countries and has a staff of 4,000. In 2010 it wrote gross premiums of $6.6 billion.
The Georgian building has been vacant for almost a decade. It was originally bought for over €10 million by businessman Hugh O’Regan who is thought to have spent as much again refurbishing it. His plan was to reopen it as a private club for “young and emerging businessmen and women”. That ambition ended in 2009, when Anglo Irish Bank sought the repayment of loans totalling €27 million secured on two properties – a vacant building on Parliament Street and the former Hibernian club.
Receiver Martin Ferris offered the former club for sale in 2009 through joint agents Kelly Walsh and DTZ Sherry FitzGerald who looked for offers between €15 and €20 million. That valuation proved wide of the mark because of a sharp slippage in property prices and the banking crisis. Jeremy Kelly of Kelly Walsh said the former club had the potential to be one of the most prestigious office buildings in the city centre.
At one stage it was thought likely that the building would be rented by fashion retailer Abercrombie and Fitch but it settled for the empty Habitat building at College Green. The former Hibernian club has an overall floor area of 2,322sq m (25,000sq ft) and a separate access to the basement which has been fitted out as a restaurant complete with kitchen and toilets.
A receiver has also been appointed to another O’Regan company, Dashaven, which was redeveloping the Kilternan Hotel and Sports Club in south Co Dublin with borrowings of €171.5 million from Irish Nationwide. He acquired what was then the Kilternan Golf and Country Club for €12.7 million in 2001.
O’Regan assembled about 330 acres adjoining it with the intention of turning it into an extensive resort with a 129-bedroom hotel, music studios, restaurants, a leisure and golf club, swimming pool and 74-unit apartment hotel. The project was around 90 per cent complete when a receiver was appointed.
