A group of Irish investors has taken a $440 million (€369 million) stake in a 77-acre New York property scheme worth $1.76 billion, it has emerged.
The deal includes three apartment towers in Trump Place - named after the businessman and television personality Donald Trump - on Manhattan's Upper West Side and an adjacent tract of undeveloped land with capacity for 10 high-rise buildings.
The identities of the 10-member group, drawn together by the private clients division of Davy Stockbrokers in Dublin, are not being disclosed. In just 10 days, the buyers raised $100 million in equity and borrowed $340 million from banks.
They took a 25 per cent stake in Trump Place ("Where the West Side meets the River" according to its promotional website) which has 1,325 apartments. The deal includes a large disused adjacent railyard on Riverside Boulevard, which has planning permission for some 3,000 apartments on 409,000sq metres (4.4 million square feet).
The lead investor was the $29.6 billion Washington private equity fund, Carlyle Group, which took 50 per cent. The US-owned Extell Development Company is believed to have taken the other 25 per cent.
As part of a deal signed around June 20th, Carlyle agreed to sell Trump Place for $816 million in the second-half of this year to another US group, Equity Residential.
Investment sources said this price represented a premium over the purchase price of about $300 million, yielding a potential paper profit to Davy of $75 million. It is understood that the minimum investment in the Irish group was $4.5 million.
The group's $340 million debt was sourced in US banks that lent in tranches earmarked for each building at Trump Place and for each new apartment building planned for the site. The properties were acquired from a Hong Kong-based investment company, New World Holdings and Mr Trump.
The Irish group has yet to decide if it will exit the scheme before the apartments are built.
Sources said the success of a 60-storey apartment project led by Carlyle Group at 42nd Street and 9th Avenue in New York "may encourage" the investors to wait until completion.
