{"id":285446,"date":"2026-01-15T08:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T08:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/285446\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T08:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T08:52:08","slug":"austrian-bid-for-finance-ireland-seen-as-positive-signal-for-ptsb-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/285446\/","title":{"rendered":"Austrian bid for Finance Ireland seen as positive signal for PTSB \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vienna-based lender Bawag<\/a>\u2019s hotly-tipped bid interest in PTSB<\/a> has been given a boost by reports that the banking group is in talks to buy Finance Ireland<\/a> for as much as \u20ac300 million, according to industry sources and analysts. <\/p>\n

The Irish Times reported early last April that PTSB had made a takeover approach for Finance Ireland, a nonbank provider of car, commercial property, agri and small-business loans, to reduce its dependence on income from mortgage lending.<\/p>\n

However, those overtures had gone nowhere by the time PTSB put itself up for sale in October. <\/p>\n

Bawag is now in exclusive negotiations to purchase Finance Ireland for between \u20ac250 million and \u20ac300 million, online publication the Currency has reported. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis news suggests that Bawag is on an expansionary trail in Ireland,\u201d said John Cronin, founder of Seapoint Insights, a research firm specialising in banking and financial services. \u201cIts apparent appetite to pursue [deals] together with its capacity to buy something of significant size suggests to me it\u2019s very likely PTSB is also an acquisition target for Bawag.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Finance Ireland said that while the company \u201cwill always explore opportunities that present themselves, we don\u2019t comment on market rumours\u201d. A spokesman for Bawag and a spokeswoman for Finance Ireland\u2019s controlling shareholder, US investment group Pimco, declined to comment. <\/p>\n

Finance Ireland was set up in 2002 by Billy Kane, a former chief executive of PTSB\u2019s precursor, Irish Permanent. It had \u20ac1.2 billion of car, commercial property, agri and small-business loans at the end of 2024. <\/p>\n

The largest nonbank lender in the Republic revealed last March it had decided to stop mortgage lending, having effectively been out of this market in recent years.<\/p>\n

A takeover by a bank would give Finance Ireland access to cheaper sources of funding. Unlike banks, which mainly fund their loan books through cheap deposits, non-banks are reliant on wholesale and capital markets, where rates have spiked in recent years as central banks hike official borrowing costs to rein in inflation. <\/p>\n

While the European Central Bank (ECB) cut its key deposit rate from 4 per cent to 2 per cent in the 13 months to last June, there is mounting speculation that the next move may be upwards. <\/p>\n

Bawag acquired the company behind fledgling Irish mortgage lender MoCo<\/a> two years ago. MoCo, which operates as a branch of the Austrian bank, started mortgage lending in early 2024 through the broker market. It subsequently moved late last year into the Irish deposits market. <\/p>\n

Bawag was previously best known in Irish financial circles for buying the remnants of Dublin-based Depfa Bank in 2021.<\/p>\n

A deal to buy Finance Ireland \u201cwould strengthen Bawag\u2019s presence in Ireland and broaden its product offering beyond mortgages into Finance Ireland\u2019s primary activities of car finance, property, SME and agri lending,\u201d said Diarmaid Sheridan, an analyst with Davy. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnder Bawag\u2019s ownership, Finance Ireland could gain access to cheaper deposit funding sources, potentially reducing interest costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industry sources noted on Wednesday that if Bawag ultimately emerges as a successful bidder too for PTSB, combining the business with Finance Ireland and MoCo would give the enlarged entity more scale and lead to significant synergies, boosting earnings. <\/p>\n

PTSB and its advisers in Goldman Sachs are seeking firm expressions of interest from interested parties by the end of January to determine whether to push the process into a binding bidding round, according to industry sources. The bank currently has a market value of \u20ac1.52 billion. <\/p>\n

Bawag is widely seen as the most obvious strategic bidder. Industry sources say that the sale has also attracted several international private equity firms that typically look at banking assets.<\/p>\n

Lone Star and Centerbridge Partners are expected to bid. JC Flowers, Apollo, Cerberus and Blackstone are also among US private equity firms that have taken controlling stakes in European banks since the financial crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vienna-based lender Bawag\u2019s hotly-tipped bid interest in PTSB has been given a boost by reports that the banking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[90683,79,18,143221,19,17,76954,37657],"class_list":{"0":"post-285446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bawag","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-finance-ireland","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-moco","15":"tag-ptsb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115898269268725422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}