The sale of properties, including a landmark department store, aided Sean Mulryan's Markland Holdings in cutting debts due to State agency Nama by €223 million, latest figures show.
Accounts just filed for 2016 show that Markland cut its debt to Nama to €37.8 million at the end of the year from €260.7 million 12 months earlier, a reduction of €222.9 million.
Over the course of 2016, Markland sold assets such as the Kotva department store in the Czech capital, Prague, to a local property magnate for €80 million.
Kotva is reputedly one of Prague’s most recognisable buildings. Finished in the 1970s, it was one of the first department stores built in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia.
Markland also sold properties in Hungary, a shopping centre in Wiesbaden, Germany, and several Georgian buildings in Dublin in 2016.
Its balance sheet shows that Markland was left with properties worth €34.34 million at the end of the year, compared with €256.56 million 12 months earlier.
Rent Disposals – sales – accounted for €198 million of the fall in the value of its assets over that time.
Mr Mulryan founded Markland with the late Paddy Kelly of Kelland Homes and took full control when his fellow developer passed away.
The company continued to sell buildings last year as it prepared for what directors Frank Walker and John Sisk call an "orderly" winding up in 2018.
Their report shows that Markland sold properties on Herbert Place and Herbert Lane in Dublin 2 in 2017, but it does not give a value for either deal.
The directors had originally expected to begin liquidating the business, whose activities consist of collecting rent and selling properties, last year.
The wind-up is in line the business plan that Markland agreed with Nama in 2011.
The company is selling off the properties to repay debts that the agency inherited from Bank of Ireland and the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank in 2010.
Markland's remaining assets include a shopping centre in Surrey in England.
Its balance sheet for December 31st, 2016, shows a shortfall of €7.53 million. Along with its Nama debt, other liabilities included deferred tax of €1.3 million and €2.3 million to cover liquidation costs.
Profits after tax fell 20 per cent to €4.8 million in 2016 from €6.1 million the previous year, partly because the company’s income from rent fell as it sold properties.
