Hines Enters Ireland to Clean Up Properties

DUBLIN-Hines has opened an office here to target real estate and development opportunities emerging from the restructuring of the Irish banking and real estate sectors. Brian Moran, a native of Dublin who worked with Hines in the 1990s, has been hired to manage the office.

He tells GlobeSt.com that some sectors of the economy, post banking crisis, are in good health, with office leasing moving at a good pace and exports growing to double-digit figures for the past two years. However, Moran says the restructuring of the Irish real estate industry during the next few years will take considerable resources and capital to make it stable again.

“Outside of Dublin, and generally, domestic demand is shrinking dramatically as the country de-leverages and deflates,” Moran says. “The prime strategy for a market entry is to assist in the large scale re-capitalization of Irish-owned and banked assets that will happen over the next few years as local banks balance sheets are shrunk and the Northern Ireland Advisory Committee offloads the assets it has taken from Irish banks. Many of these assets are not in Ireland itself.”

He says the company is interested in Dublin-based offices, and is tracking demand from financial services groups and IT companies looking for European headquarters, such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. “About 25% of all US Foreign Direct Investment goes into Ireland,” he says.

Michael Topham, CEO of Hines Europe, says his firm has significant resources to assist owners of distressed real estate. “We have been monitoring the situation in Dublin very closely over the past few years and feel the time is right to commit resources and focus of the firm on the situation,” Topham said in a statement.