Ukraine war pushes IBRC unit into loss

IBRC Investment Recovery Limited posted a loss of $191,479 (€175,936) for 2022 compared with income of $11.8m for the prior year, according to a filing made yesterday with UK Companies House.

The entity is a holding company for QIPG Refinance Limited, the asset recovery operation set up in 2013 to go after a portfolio of office blocks, shopping malls and logistics warehouses in Russia and Ukraine – once worth €500m and previously owned by Seán Quinn and his family.

QIPG Refinance was previously a joint venture between IBRC and Alfa A1, a business controlled by the Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. However, A1 exited the joint venture in 2016 after only managing to sell one of the assets in Russia.

“The main driver of the decreased profitability compared to the prior year arose from the lack or recovery of various debts and the release of related impairment provision associated with those recoveries in QIPG due to the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine, but which occurred successfully in the prior year,” said the filing.

IBRC assets in Ukraine are the Univermag Ukraina, a 20-year-old shopping centre in Kyiv, and a nearby office block in the city. The Univermag mall was closed after the war erupted and has since reopened, according to a source close to the IBRC.

QIPG is continuing to seek recovery of funds from “an Ukrainian asset” but admitted that the value of funds that can be recovered are uncertain “particularly given the ongoing economic and political difficulties in Ukraine and the increase in hostilities taking place”.

Special liquidators at the IBRC are making a big push this year to recover funds for the state by selling off the remaining assets of the vast property portfolio previously owned by the Quinn family.

The Irish Independent last week reported the IBRC has sold the 128-bedroom Holiday Inn in Nottingham for about £11.9m (€13.5m). It was previously owned by Aoife Quinn, the second-youngest daughter of Seán Quinn.

In February, IBRC sold another former Quinn family property, the Barge, a well-known pub on the banks of Dublin's Grand Canal, for €3.75m.

It is expected that the Slieve Russell hotel, golf and country club will go on the market later.

Dublin hotel Buswells has been taken off the market after being earmarked for a sale of about €22m.

The liquidators hope to place Q City office complex in Hyderabad, India on the market soon in a sale that could reportedly yield €65m. The Hilton Prague, a 791-bedroom conference hotel which could be worth up to €250m, may go on the market next year after recently being refurbished.

The Irish Independent reported last year that the Russian government could nationalise the IBRC’s Kutuzoff tower block in the Russian capital and a logistics park in Kazan in retaliation for EU sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.