Marathon Asset Buying Irish Real-Estate Loans, CEO Richards Says
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Marathon Asset Management LP’s Bruce Richards says his firm is ramping up investment in Europe on bets that central-bank easing, a depreciating euro and the plunge in oil prices will buoy the region’s growth.
The hedge fund, which manages about $13 billion, last week bought a non-performing loan from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, a group set up in 2009 to take control of banks’ toxic property loans. Backed by 588 multifamily units in Dublin, the loan marks Marathon’s 12th such purchase in two years in a country whose economic growth Richards says outpaces that of its European counterparts.