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Pepper moves into Irish mortgage market
Freehills has advised on the anticipated acquisition of GE Capital’s Irish residential mortgage business, GE Capital Woodchester Home Loans Limited (GE Capital Woodchester).
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Firms: Freehills (Pepper Home Loans Group), McCann Fitzgerald (local advisor for Pepper Homeloans in Ireland), Arthur Cox (GE Capital)
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Deal: Anticipated acquisition of GE Capital’s Irish residential mortgage business, GE Capital Woodchester Home Loans Limited (GE Capital Woodchester), as the Australian company enters the European market
Area: M&A
Value: Undisclosed
Key players: The Freehills team was led by partner Mark Crean, with support from senior associate Mark Currell. Freehills worked closely with Irish law firm McCann Fitzgerald.
“Pepper Home Loans has rapidly grown its Australian and New Zealand businesses. It is great to see this dynamic Australian company now expanding into international markets and we are happy to have been a part of this,” said Crean. In a separate agreement, Pepper will also take over the servicing of GE Capital’s Irish portfolio of personal, small enterprise and auto loans, maintaining an ongoing working relationship between the two organisations.
The Freehills team also recently advised Pepper Home Loans on its purchase of more than $5 billion in mortgage assets from GE Money, marking GE Money’s exit from the Australian and New Zealand local market.
Deal significance: The agreement will see GE Capital Woodchester’s entire share capital acquired by Pepper, including its 3500 mortgage customers and portfolio of approximately €600 million. The company will be renamed Pepper Ireland Limited following completion of the transaction.
